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The patriarch, treerness and with exhaustion--for he was very old and now his vital forces were all but spent--breathed it only with difficulty Rapid was his respiration; on either pallid cheek a strange and vivid patch of color showed

Suddenly he spoke

"Stars? You see theain! Oh, that I s of ancient story! Then, verily, I should be glad to die!"

Midnight

Hard-driven now fortrue, the Pauillac had at length ain the voyagers felt solid earth beneath their feet By the clear starlight Stern had brought the machine to earth on a little plateau, wooded in part, partly bare sand Nuhted froht, The girl, radiant with joy, had kissed him full upon the lips; the patriarch had fallen on his knees, and, gathering a handful of the sand--the precious surface of the earth, long fabled a worshipped in his deepest reveries--had clasped it to his thin and heaving breast

If he had kno to pray he would have worshipped there But even though his lips were silent, his attitude, his soul were all one vast and heartfelt prayer--prayer to the ht, the wind upon his brow, the sweet and subtle airs of heaven that enfolded him like a caress

Stern wrapped the old ht was chill, thenfire on the sands Worn out, they rested, all Little they said The beauty andabsence--a hundred times more solemn than they had ever known it, kept the two Ahts, sat by the fire, burning with a fever of is for the dawn

Five o'clock

Now all across the eastern sky, shrouded as it ith the slow, silent hostly fro, shading above to light blues and to purples of exquisite depth and clarity

No cloud flecked the sky, the wondrous sky of early spring Dawn, pure as on the pri from the eastern depths And, thrilled by that eternal miracle, theof the light

The patriarch spoke

"Is the sun nigh arisen now?" he queried in a strange, awed voice, tre, at last--the sun?"