sternly. "Take heed while there is time, and embrace the true faith;
for the end of the world is at hand, and when it comes there will be no
mercy for those who have shut their eyes to the light." So saying, he
turned back once more to his praying-stool and to his crucifix, while
the young Roman walked in deep thought down the hill, and mounting his
horse, rode off to his distant post. Simon watched him until his
brazen helmet was but a bead of light on the western edge of the great
plain; for this was the first human face that he had seen in all this
long year, and there were times when his heart yearned for the voices
and the faces of his kind.

So another year passed, and save for the chance of weather and the slow
change of the seasons, one day was as another. Every morning, when
Simon opened his eyes, he saw the same grey line ripening into red in
the furthest east, until the bright rim pushed itself above that far-off
horizon across which no living creature had ever been known to come.
Slowly the sun swept across the huge arch of the heavens, and as the
shadows shifted from the black rocks which jutted upward from above his
cell, so did the hermit regulate his terms of prayer and meditation.
There was nothing on earth to draw his eye, or to distract his mind, for
the grassy plain below was as void from month to month as the heaven
above. So the long hours passed, until the red rim slipped down on the
further side, and the day ended in the same pearl-grey shimmer with
which it had begun. Once two ravens circled for some days round the
lonely hill, and once a white fish-eagle came from the Dneister and
screamed above the hermit's head. Sometimes red dots were seen on the
green plain where the antelopes grazed, and often a wolf howled in the
darkness from the base of the rocks. Such was the uneventful life of
Simon Melas the anchorite, until there came the day of wrath.