his arm across his blinded eyes, shuddering with rapture.

He could not uncover his face, and it was as he lay quaking with an
unearthly joy that he first thought he heard sounds of music as remotely
distant as the lights.

"Is it on earth?" he panted. "Is it on earth?"

He struggled to his knees. He had heard of miracles and wonders of old,
and of the past ages when the sons of God visited the earth.

"Glory to God in the highest!" he stammered again and again and again.
"Glory to the great Jehovah!" and he touched his forehead seven times to
the earth.

Then he beheld a singular thing. When he had gone to sleep a flock of
sheep had been lying near him on the grass. The flock was still there,
but something seemed to be happening to it. The creatures were awakening
from their sleep as if they had heard something. First one head was
raised, and then another and another and another, until every head was
lifted, and every one was turned toward a certain point as if listening.
What were they listening for? Zia could see nothing, though he turned
his own face toward the climbing road and listened with them. The
floating radiance was so increasing in the sky that at this point of the
mountain-side it seemed no longer to the night, and the far-away paeans
held him breathless with mysterious awe. Was the sound on earth? Where
did it come from? Where?

"Praised be Jehovah!" he heard his weak and shaking young voice quaver.