The fiery wreaths leaped upwards toward the
same purple sky, as if pointing with long, red fingers, in mockery of
the priest's devotion; and the ruddy glare, falling upon him as he
stood so still there, enveloped him with a halo of light. It gleamed
upon his head, upon his uplifted hands, upon the curves of the wings on
his shoulders, silhouetting him against the darkness, and lighting his
white habiliments until, all motionless as he was, he seemed like a
marble statue dazzlingly radiant in the light of one crimson gleam from
a sinking sun.

And so he stood, heeding it not, till the moon rose, soft and full; the
mountain-tops shone with a rim of silver, the valleys far below the
temple looked deeper in the shade, and the fire burned low.

Rapt and more rapt grew the face of the priest. Surely the struggle of
his soul was being answered, and in his nearness to Nature, he was
getting a faint, far-off gleam of the true nature of Nature's God. His
glance fell to the changing landscape below; his arms were extended as
if in benediction; and his lips moved in a low and passionate farewell
to his native land. Then he turned.

The fire burned low on the altar.

"Sacred symbol, whose beams have no power to warm my chilled heart, I
bid you a long farewell! They will say that Yusuf is faithless, a false
priest. They will mayhap follow him to slay him. And they will bow again
to yon image, and defile thine altars again with infants' blood, not
discerning the true God. Yet he must be approachable. I feel it! I know
it! O Great Spirit, reveal Thyself unto Yusuf! Reveal Thyself unto
Persia! Great Spirit, guide me!"

For the first time, Yusuf thus addressed a prayer direct to the Deity,
and he did so in fear and trembling.

A faint gleam shone feebly amid the ashes of the now blackening altar.
It flared up for an instant, then fell, and the sacred fire of the
Guebre temple was dead.

"The embers die!" cried the priest. "Yea, mockery of the Divine, die in
thine ashes!"

He waited no longer, but strode with swift step down the mountain, and
into the shade of the valley. Reaching, at last, a cave in the side of a
great rock, he entered, and stripped himself of his priestly garments.
Then, drawing from a recess the garb of an ordinary traveler, he dressed
himself quickly, rolled his white robes into a ball, and plunged farther
into the cave. In the darkness the rush of falling water warned him that
an abyss was near. Dropping o