JosÉ brought in the horses and he and the Captain saddled and packed them; after which they silently broke camp in the light of the stars and the waning moon. JosÉ took his place at the head of the little cavalcade, Chiquita following him and the Captain bringing up the rear; he and Chiquita casting a last look at their first camp as they rode away.

No one spoke. Save for the measured tread of the horses and noise of the rushing stream along which the trail led upwards, no sounds disturbed the silence of the night. Now and then an occasional spark, struck from the horses' iron-rimmed hoofs, flashed for an instant in the darkness along the trail.

The Captain's gaze was riveted upon Chiquita's tall, erect figure in front of him who ever and anon turned in the saddle and smiled, her beautiful, lustrous eyes flashing like stars in the moon-fire.

Higher and higher they mounted, pausing occasionally to allow the horses time to draw breath, until they at length drew rein on the summit of the Sierra Madres. Here a wonderful sight met their eyes, poised as they were upon the rim of the earth and gazing off into star-strewn space. Dawn was just breaking, suffusing the long line of the eastern horizon with a soft, rosy glow which crept swiftly towards them over the gray-green, purple plains that swept away from the mountains' base like vast undulating stretches of ocean; the golden shafts of the on-coming dawn driving the paling stars before them like a shepherd his flocks to the hills. North and south, as far as the eye could reach, stretched the broken and many crested length of the great Sierra Madre range; its sides clothed with dark forests of cedar and pine and chaparral, its secluded recesses obscured in the gloom; its highest peaks glowing with golden, pink and violet tints. In the west, surrounded by a host of golden stars that still glittered in the purple black depths of vanishing night, the silver moon hung half-way dipped as it slowly sank behind the towering crest of the Sahuaripa range, an isolated spur of the Sierra Madres. A vast plain intervened between them and the distant Sierras at whose foot dwelt the Tewana.

Far below them, from out the shadowy depths on either side of the range, arose faint sounds of awakening life. The breeze began to sigh among the tree tops, while high above them they heard the wild scream of eagles that soared in great circles with widespread pinions in their morning flight to greet the sun. Great waves of indefinable melody, more subtle and exquisite than music, swept over them, causing their souls to quicken and tingle in the freshening dawn as the Day Star rose to hold again his sway over earth. His mighty splendor and effulgence swept through and over them, their souls vibrating with renewed life and vigor as they felt and recognized God's sign and immanence as in the days when man first walked with Him in the cool of the morning.

They realized that they had entered upon the new life. The promise was fulfilled—the veil was lifted. The scroll of human destiny seemed to unroll itself from out the dim traditions of the past, and they beheld as in a dream the life that was when first the children of men roamed the earth and established the Kingdom of God which was intended from the beginning. In the picture of the golden childhood of the race, they beheld reflected in the new light of the future, the vision of the emancipated, delivered man, guided by the lessons still to be learned from the great Book of Nature lying open before him, and the accumulated wisdom of past ages, handed down to him by his forefathers through travail and suffering and in legend and song from those ancient days of suns and nights of stars when the earth and man were young. A freeborn race of men who are joint tenants of the soil, sharing all things in common with which their bountiful Mother, the Earth, has provided them. A race of men, athletic in body as they are able in mind, and spiritual and courageous, recognizing no laws but those of Nature's or God's.

In silence and with bared heads they gazed upon the grandeur of the scene that lay spread out before them. It was as though they looked back upon the old life from another world. It lay so far behind them that it seemed but a memory; not a vestige of it clung to them, so filled were they with new hopes and aspirations.

"Behold!" cried JosÉ excitedly, pointing toward the west. And looking in the direction indicated by his outstretched arm, they beheld in the dim distance numerous columns of smoke rising heavenward in the clear morning air from the tops of the mesas that dotted the plain.

"'Tis the sign of your coming, Princess!" he continued. "The people have bowed to the will of the White Cloud—acknowledged the authority of the White Chief."

Parrakeets began to twitter among the branches of the trees on every hand during their descent of the western slope. Ravens croaked and called from the heart of the forest, and the owl flitted by on silent wing. Black birds with orange heads and throats and splashed with scarlet on their wings, greeted them at the foot of the mountain among the reeds which grew along the stream they were following. Deer broke from the willow copse and bounded away, while grouse rose on whirring wings from under the horses' hoofs as they emerged upon the plain where the wild cry of the curlew rang clear and sharp on the morning. They were free and breathed deep of the spirit of freedom; listened to the old primeval song of nature's myriad voices; gazed long upon the pristine loveliness of earth.

All that day and the three following, the columns of smoke continued to rise heavenward as they pursued their journey. At night, pillars of fire took the place of the smoke, and all the while, save for an occasional glimpse in the distance of a solitary horseman who faded specterlike from view on their approach, they saw not a soul.

The Spirit of the Great Mystery brooded over the land, and they rode as in a dream. The fragrant cedar and piÑon-scented smoke mingled with the soft, thin haze of the Indian summer which veiled the land in its golden glow of mystery; the sacred incense, the Red men say, of the gods, burned on their altars in ancient days; a sign to the people to gather each year on the hilltops and mesas, and in the forests and plains during the moon of falling leaves, and celebrate in prayer and sacred dance and song, the advent of the gods.

The wind was hushed and all things seemed to sleep and dream, and they seemed to draw nearer to the heart of things. The great change that had come into their lives was, after all, no more wonderful than the changes which they saw had taken place in nature about them. A luxuriant growth of tropical vegetation, succeeded by vast forests of conifers, a remnant of which still survived upon the mountains, once flourished in the semi-desert through which they traveled. An occasional broken, half-buried pillar, or the remains of a crumbling wall that had witnessed the passing of the ages and listened to the tales borne on the winds, marked the existence of vanished civilizations of which men to-day know naught. All things appeared to change and fade, nothing seemed permanent, not even the ideal; the morrow was but a forgetting.

Beneath them they felt the Earth, ponderous and weighty and crushing in its immensity to the imagination, and whose existence seemed of little moment in comparison to the countless worlds that filled the universe about them. Yet, insignificant though it appeared, was it not a link in the great universal scheme of matter, and did it not stand in the same relation to the universe as their individual lives to the human race?

Like two stars their souls had rushed together from the uttermost confines of space. She had been led into his world, and he compelled to retrace his steps to almost primitive conditions in order that they might find one another and together take up the thread of their common destiny. Clearly, they were children of destiny upon whose brows God had set His seal. They realized that the path which lay before them was not one entirely strewn with flowers. That between the chosen ones, life meant something more than the love of a man for a woman, or a woman's for a man. That they still stood with their feet in the flame; that earth's cup of joy for them must still remain one of bitter-sweet; that they must go on to the end in order that men might see and hear; that the new order of things must spring from them.

Gay was the Princess. She laughed and talked and related incidents of her life and her people; the silvery tinkle of the bells on her spurs, accompanying every movement of her horse, chimed sweetly with her mood. In the raven folds of her blue-black hair, she wore again the red berries as on the day when first he beheld her. She seemed a part of that tawny landscape, splashed with great patches of crimson and gold and gray and purple—the spirit and incarnation of the Indian summer.

As he gazed upon her and listened to her words, the wild refrain of those familiar lines recurred to him:

The woman of the ages had come back again. Lilith and Eve and Isis and Venus, the foam-kissed, and Erda, the dreaming one. The vision of the ancient world rose before him; virgin forests and plains and mighty rivers and mountains; the ancient temples of the Nile and the Ganges, Hellas' fanes and Druidic monoliths and sacred groves, and voices of strange peoples mingled with the soft notes of reed and lute.

Within the unending circle of life and death, of love and hatred, of joy and sorrow and remorse which mark the rise and passing of the civilizations, he beheld the sacred ash and pine, and starry lotus afloat upon the face of moonlit waters in which were mirrored the palm and papyrus and acanthus, and stood face to face with the serpent and wolf, the winged horse and sphinx, and the dragon and the griffin when their secret origins and significance were known unto men. The sounds of harps and cymbals and lyres and timbrels blended with those of conch-shells and antelope horns. Sighs and laughter and curses and weeping mingled with the wild strains of Homeric song and mystic rites of Chaldea and Babylon, and the sacred chant of Isis. The Voodoo danced to the rattle of shells and antelope hoofs before the shrines of Ethiopia's dark woman, crowned with the sickle moon, and vast multitudes knelt and lay prostrate before the car of Juggernaut and the passing image of Pracriti of Asia, the many-breasted, the Goddess of Abundance.

Sun and Fire worshipers tore the hearts and scalps from living victims and held them aloft to the rising sun, and men and wild beasts fought in arenas amid the acclamations of the people.

He beheld the milk-white bullocks of the Druid, garlanded with flowers, heading the procession that entered the dark groves in search of the sacred mistletoe-bearing oak; the processions of Pan and Odin, and Siva and Vishnu and Baal, and Venus and Bacchus. Nymphs and fauns and dryads and hamadryads called from the depths of the forest, and youths and maidens and shepherds with vine-wreathed brows danced in the sunlit glades and on the hills where the white flocks roamed, to the plaintive notes of the mystic pipes of Pan. He beheld the flaunting banners and flashing steel of victorious hosts and heard the wild, weird chants of wandering, barbaric hordes that conquered and destroyed. The flash and roar of artillery of recent times but intensified the gloom that brooded over the world. The struggle was unending. Men still remained the victims and slaves of passion and desire. Their sighs and curses and groans and cries of hatred and despair increased with the years; the smoke of their torment blackened the face of the sun.

The waves of human harmony and discord swept over him like the sounds of mighty rushing winds and waters, and he beheld the race to-day, as in the past, in the plains and on the high tops, prostrate and erect with hands outstretched toward the heavens, crying for release. And yet through it and beneath it and above it all, he heard a ringing note of triumph that swelled onward and upward until the vision shone clear, and the true import of their lives stood revealed. They had overcome the world; broken the fiery chains of desire.

The heavens of the old world rolled together like a scroll, and the sun and the moon and the stars and the earth fell into the burning sea of man's worldliness, but out of the chaos that followed, the earth emerged once more, green and beautiful, and grain waved upon its face, and the voice of the Angel rang clear, crying aloud and mightily:

"Babylon the Great is fallen, is fallen! Babylon, the woman mounted upon the scarlet beast and arrayed in purple and scarlet color and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, and having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations.... Babylon upon whose forehead is written, 'Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth.' Babylon drunk with wine and the blood of those who stood for the truth. Babylon, of whose wine and delights all men have drunk and with whom all the nations of the Earth have committed fornication. Babylon whose sins have reached unto heaven; who hath glorified herself and lived deliciously and who said in her heart: 'I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall know no sorrow; my joy shall continue forever!'

"Her plagues shall come in one day, death and mourning and famine, and she shall be utterly burned with fire. And the kings and the rulers of earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the mighty men, and the chief Captains, and the bondsmen, and the free-men who have lived deliciously with her and who bear the mark of the beast in their hands and upon their foreheads shall bewail her and lament for her, crying:

"'Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city!'

"And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more: The merchandise of gold and silver and precious stones, and of pearls and fine linen, and purple, and silk and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass and iron and marble. And cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men....

"The fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from thee, and thou shalt find them no more at all. The merchants of these things which were made rich by her shall stand afar off ... weeping and wailing and saying: 'Alas, alas that great city, that was clothed in fine linen and purple and scarlet, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls....' And every ship master and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea ... shall cry when they see the smoke of her burning, saying: 'What city is like unto this great city?' And they shall cast dust on their heads, and weeping and wailing, cry: 'Alas, alas that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness!'

"Babylon, Babylon, thine idols and graven images of gods shall be cast down and shattered utterly and forever! The voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers, and trumpeters shall be heard no more at all in thee; and no craftsman of whatsoever craft he be shall be found any more in thee; and the sound of a millstone shall be heard no more at all in thee; and the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee; for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations of the earth deceived!"

Babylon, Babylon, thou fair city, thou proud world, thou wonderful emanation of men's minds, thou fair wanton, thou beauteous licentious harlot of gold and gems, and white linen, and silks, and of henna, and myrrh, and frankincense, and sweet-smelling herbs, no more shall thy sons and daughters rejoice in thee and worship thee! Thy grass shall be withered and thy fig trees shall cast their figs, and thy gold and silver, and thy diamonds, and rubies, and sapphires, and turquoise, and emeralds, and opals, and pearls, and topaz, shall lie scattered and in heaps for him to take who wisheth them, but none shall desire them.

No more shall thy daughters sit in the shadow of thy vines where nesteth the dove, and glorify thee in idle jest and laughter and song, and longingly wait for the coming of the night, for they shall be bereft of their silks, and their girdles, and anklets, and bracelets of gold and jewels. Thy songs and pÆans of triumph and victory shall cease with the tainted stream of thy desires, and the walls of thy temples shall crumble to dust. Thy stars shall pale, and the sun and the moon shall illumine thee no longer, for the day approacheth when thy blandishments shall fail to allure.

Babylon, Babylon, thou proud city, thou who sitteth upon many waters, thou whose sway encompasseth the earth, how hast thou fallen!