about him, while the dawn was
already in the east.

[Illustration: Ayrault's Vision.]

"My mortal eyes and senses are keener here while I sleep than when I
wake," he thought, as he looked about him, "for spirits, unable to
affect me while waking, have made themselves felt in my more sensitive
state while I was asleep. Nevertheless, this is none other but the
house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

"The boulders were still in motion when I opened my eyes," he mused;
"can it be that there is hereabouts such a flower as in my dreams I
seemed to see?" and looking beyond where his head had lain, he beheld
the identical lily surrounded by the group that his closed eyes had
already seen. Thereupon he uncovered his head and departed quickly.
Crossing the divide, he descended to camp, where he found Cortlandt in
deep thought.

"I cannot get over the dreams," said the doctor, "I had in the first
part of the night. Notwithstanding yesterday's excitement and fatigue,
my sleep was most disturbed, and I was visited by visions of my wife,
who died long ago. She warned me against skepticism, and seemed much
distressed at my present spiritual state."

"I," said Bearwarden, who had been out early, and had succeeded in
bringing in half a dozen birds, "was so disturbed I could not sleep.
It seemed to me as though half the men I have ever known came and
warned me against agnosticism and my materialistic tendencies. They
kept repeating, 'You are losing the reality for the shadow.'"

"I am convinced," said Ayrault, "that they were not altogether dreams,
or, if dreams indeed, that they were superinduced by a higher will. We
know that angels have often appeared to men in the past. May it not be
that, as our appreciativeness increases, these communications will
recur?" Thereupon he related his own experiences.

"The thing that surprised me," said Cortlandt, as they finished
breakfast, "was the extraordinary realism of the scene. We must see if
our visions return on anything but an empty stomach."

CHAPTER VI.

A GREAT VOID AND A GREAT LONGING.

Resuming their march, the travellers proceeded along the circumference
of a circle having a radius of about three miles, with the Callisto in
the centre. In crossing soft places they observed foot-prints forming
in the earth all around them. The impressions were of all sizes, and
ceased when they reached rising or hard ground, on