voice is harsh in the song; _I_ have neither honor nor command,
and men bow not the head as I pass along; yet do I feel within
me the consciousness of a great power that should rule my
species--not obey. My eye pierces the secret hearts of men--I
see their thoughts ere their lips proclaim them; and I scorn,
while I see, the weakness and the vices which I never shared. I
laugh at the madness of the warrior--I mock within my soul at
the tyranny of kings. Surely there is something in man's nature
more fitted to command--more worthy of renoun, than the sinews
of the arm, or the swiftness of the feet, or the accident of
birth!"

As Morven, the son of Osslah, thus mused within himself, still
looking at the heavens, the solitary man beheld a star suddenly
shooting from its place, and speeding through the silent air,
till it as suddenly paused right over the midnight river, and
facing the inmate of the pile of stones.

As he gazed upon the star strange thoughts grew slowly over him.
He drank, as it were, from its solemn aspect, the spirit of a
great design. A dark cloud rapidly passing over the earth,
snatched the star from his sight; but left to his awakened mind
the thoughts and the dim scheme that had come to him as he
gazed.

When the sun arose one of his brethren relieved him of his
charge over the herd, and he went away, but not to his father's
home. Musingly he plunged into the dark and leafless recesses of
the winter forest; and shaped out of his wild thoughts, more
palpably and clearly, the outline of his daring hope.