labouring under disease or pain--what leaf or berry the lizard or
dormouse lay upon its wounded fellow; to which purpose for long years
he had led the life of a wanderer, in wild places. The boy took his
place as the last comer, a little way behind the group of worshippers
who stood in front of the image. There, with uplifted face, the
palms of his two hands raised and open before him, and taught by the
priest, he said his collect of thanksgiving and prayer (Aristeides
has recorded it at the end of his Asclepiadae) to the Inspired
Dreams:--

"O ye children of Apollo! who in time past have stilled the waves of
sorrow for many people, lighting up a lamp of safety before those who
travel by sea and land, be pleased, in your great condescension,
though ye be equal in glory with your elder brethren the Dioscuri,
and your lot in immortal youth be as theirs, to accept this prayer,
which in sleep and vision ye have inspired. Order it aright, I pray
you, according to your loving-kindness to men. Preserve me [40] from
sickness; and endue my body with such a measure of health as may
suffice it for the obeying of the spirit, that I may pass my days
unhindered and in quietness."

On the last morning of his visit Marius entered the shrine again, and
just before his departure the priest, who had been his special
director during his stay at the place, lifting a cunningly contrived
panel, which formed the back of one of the carved seats, bade him
look through. What he saw was like the vision of a new world, by the
opening of some unsuspected window in a familiar dwelling-place. He
looked out upon a long-drawn valley of singularly cheerful aspect,
hidden, by the peculiar conformation of the locality, from all points
of observation but this. In a green meadow at the foot of the steep