Next morning at the dawn, the weather being still favourable, our companion returned to the monastery, whither we said we would follow him in a day or two.

Now at last we were alone, and without wasting an instant began our ascent of the peak.  It was many thousand feet high and in certain places steep enough, but the deep, frozen snow made climbing easy, so that by midday we reached the top.  Hence the view was magnificent.  Beneath us stretched the desert, and beyond it a broad belt of fantastically shaped, snow-clad mountains, hundreds and hundreds of them; in front, to the right, to the left, as far as the eye could reach.

“They are just as I saw them in my dream so many years ago,” muttered Leo; “the same, the very same.”

“And where was the fiery light?” I asked.

“Yonder, I think;” and he pointed north by east.

“Well, it is not there now,” I answered, “and this place is cold.”

So, since it was dangerous to linger, lest the darkness should overtake us on our return journey, we descended the peak again, reaching the cave about sunset.  The next four days we spent in the same way.  Every morning we crawled up those wearisome banks of snow, and every afternoon we slid and tobogganed down them again, till I grew heartily tired of the exercise.

On the fourth night, instead of coming to sleep in the tent Leo sat himself down at the entrance to the cave.  I asked him why he did this, but he answered impatiently, because he wished it, so I left him alone.  I could see, indeed, that he was in a strange and irritable mood, for the failure of our search oppressed him.  Moreover, we knew, both of us, that it could not be much prolonged, since the weather might break at any moment, when ascents of the mountain would become impossible.

In the middle of the night I was awakened by Leo shaking me and saying—­“Come here, Horace, I have something to show you.”

Reluctantly enough I crept from between the rugs and out of the tent.  To dress there was no need, for we slept in all our garments.  He led me to the mouth of the cave and pointed northward.  I looked.  The night was very dark; but far, far away appeared a faint patch of light upon the sky, such as might be caused by the reflection of a distant fire.

“What do you make of it?” he asked anxiously.

“Nothing in particular,” I answered, “it may be anything.  The moon—­no, there is none, dawn—­no, it is too northerly, and it does not break for three hours.  Something burning, a house, or a funeral pyre, but how can there be such things here?  I give it up.”

“I think it is a reflection, and that if we were on the peak we should see the light which throws it,” said Leo slowly.

“Yes, but we are not, and cannot get there in the dark.”

“Then, Horace, we must spend a night there.”

“It will be our last in this incarnation,” I answered with a laugh, “that is if it comes on to snow.”