read through the hornbook of
the heavens. But if I can not name and locate more of the stars, I can
tell thee this about them all: they are the embers of certainty
eternally glowing in the ashes of doubt.

"The Eastern horizon is yet lost in the dusk; the false dawn is
spreading the figments of its illusion; the trees in the distance seem
like rain-clouds; and the amorphous shadows of the monasteries on the
mountain heights and hilltops all around, have not yet developed into
silhouettes. Everything, except the river in the wadi below, is yet
asleep. Not even the swallows are astir. Ah, but my neighbour yonder
is; the light in the loophole of his hut sends a struggling ray
through the mulberries, and the tintinnabulations of his daughter's
loom are like so many stones thrown into this sleeping pond of
silence. The loom-girl in these parts is never too early at her
harness and shuttle. I know a family here whose loom and spinning
wheel are never idle: the wife works at the loom in the day and her
boy at the wheel; while in the night, her husband and his old mother
keep up the game. And this hardly secures for them their flour and
lentils the year round. But I concern not myself now with questions of
economy.

"There, another of my neighbours is awake; and the hinges of his door,
shrieking terribly, fiendishly, startle the swallows from their sleep.
And here are the muleteers, yodling, as they pass by, their

'Dhome, Dhome, Dhome,
O mother, he is come;
Hide me, hide me quickly,
And say I am not home.'

"Lo, the horizon is disentangling itself from the meshes of darkness.
The dust of haze and dusk on the scalloped edges of the mountains, is
blown away by the first breath of dawn. The lighter grey of the
horizon is mirrored in the clearer blue of the sea. But the darkness
seems to gather on the breast of the sloping hills. Conquered on the
heights, it retreats into the wadi. Ay, the darkest hour is nearest
the dawn.

"Now the light grey is become a lavender; the outlines of earth and sky
are become more distinct; the mountain peaks, the dusky veil being
rent, are separating themselves from the heaven's embrace; the trees
in the distance no longer seem like rain-clouds; and the silhouettes
of the monasteries are casting off the cloak of night. The lavender is
melting now into heliotrope, and the heliotrope is bursting here and
there in pink; the stars are waning, the constellations are dying o