He waited for several minutes, attentively watching the recumbent figure before him, till gradually,—­very gradually,—­that figure took upon itself the pale, stern beauty of a corpse from which life has but recently and painlessly departed.  The limbs grew stiff and rigid—­the features smoothed into that mysteriously wise placidity which is so often seen in the faces of the dead,—­the closed eyelids looked purple and livid as though bruised ... there was not a breath, not a tremor, to offer any outward suggestion of returning animation,—­and when, after some little time, Heliobas bent down and listened, there was no pulsation of the heart ... it had ceased to beat!  To all appearances Alwyn was dead—­any physician would have certified the fact, though how he had come by his death there was no evidence to show.  And in that condition, ... stirless, breathless ... white as marble, cold and inanimate as stone, Heliobas left him.  Not in indifference, but in sure knowledge—­knowledge far beyond all mere medical science—­that the senseless clay would in due time again arise to life and motion; that the casket was but temporarily bereft of its jewel,—­and that the jewel itself, the Soul of the Poet, had by a superhuman access of will, managed to break its bonds and escape elsewhere.  But whither? ...  Into what vast realms of translucent light or drear shadow? ...  This was a question to which the mystic monk, gifted as he was with a powerful spiritual insight into “things unseen and eternal,” could find no satisfactory answer, and in his anxious perplexity he betook himself to the chapel, and there, by the red glimmer of the crimson star that shone dimly above the altar, he knelt alone and prayed in silence till the heavy night had passed, and the storm had slain itself with the sword of its own fury on the dark slopes of the Pass of Dariel.

CHAPTER IV.

“Angelus Domine.”

The next morning dawned pallidly over a sea of gray mist—­not a glimpse of the landscape was visible—­nothing but a shadowy vastness of floating vapor that moved slowly fold upon fold, wave upon wave, as though bent on blotting out the world.  A very faint, chill light peered through the narrow arched window of the room where Alwyn lay, still wrapped in that profound repose, so like the last long sleep from which some of our modern scientists tell us there can be no awakening.  His condition was unchanged,—­the wan beams of the early clay falling cross his features intensified their waxen stillness and pallor,—­the awful majesty of death was on him,—­the pathetic helplessness and perishableness of Body without Spirit.  Presently the monastery bell began to ring for matins, and as its clear chime struck through the deep silence, the door opened, and Heliobas, accompanied by another monk, whose gentle countenance and fine, soft eyes betokened the serenity of his disposition, entered the apartment.  Together they approached the couch, and gazed long and earnestly at the supernaturally slumbering man.