if all the world is very far below.

And that makes it lonely for the dweller there.

* * * * *

The stars were again alight in the heavens when the devotee awoke from
his sleep of exhaustion. To his entranced senses the stars were as the
eyes of the gods who watched the shrine where few men had ever danced
and lived. The wind touched the pines--and he thought their whispered
movement was the rustle of the wings of the eagle who had come in his
vision.

For the eagle was now his medicine, and the place where the eagle had
carried him in the dream was the best of all good places for medicine
that was strong.

In the starlight he again faced the ancient diety of the Lost
Others:--those Others who had carved the stone lions of Kat-yi-ti at
their entrance to the Under world, and had set the white stone bear of
the North on guard in the western hills. They did fine things--those
people who had perhaps first named the stars above. And this one
ancient cave god of the stone face was a link--so the wise old Ruler
had told him--with strange Mexic Brothers of the far south--who gave
worship--and gave human sacrifice, to a solitary mountain shrine,
called the shrine of the Sleeping Woman, where few men could dance--or
even learn the prayers of that dance.

No awesome Presence now faced him in the shadow of the rock as he
chanted his prayer of farewell under the stars. He had danced all
adverse spirits out of the charmed circle. His way was clearly marked
now to follow the way of the eagle,--there on the shrine of
Tse-c[=o]me-u-pin he must say the final prayer. All of harmony and
all of hope was about him. Three days and three nights had he ran or
chanted prayers, or danced fasting, yet weariness was not with him as
he ended the ceremony which no man since his birth had made in this
place.

Somewhere, he would perhaps fall on the trail, and the men of Kah-po
or of Povi-whah would find him, as fainting medicine men had been
found ere this--but that must be after he had reached the shrine, and
gave prayers at the place of the eagle dream.

Past Pu-ye he went--scarce seeing the ghost walls of the older day; in
sight of Shufinne, the little island of forgotten dwellings on the
north mesa--through the pines to the canyon of Po-et-se where rocks of
weird shapes stood like gray and white giants to bar his way. He
thought at times voices sounded from the stone pillars, but it might
be t