Its floor of smooth rock had been swept out clean,
and sprinkled with dry sea sand. There were many hollows and
projections along its sides rudely fit for serving as seats, to
which had been added a number of forms extemporized of planks and
thwarts. No one had yet arrived when they entered, and they went at
once to the further end of the cave, that Duncan, who was a little
hard of hearing, might be close to the speakers. There his companions
turned and looked behind them: an exclamation, followed by a full
glance at each other, broke from each.
The sun, just clearing the end of the opposite promontory, shone
right into the mouth of the cave, from the midst of a tumult of gold,
in which all the other colours of his approach had been swallowed
up. The triumph strode splendent over sea and shore, subduing waves
and rocks to a path for its mighty entrance into that dark cave
on the human coast. With his back to the light stood Duncan in the
bottom of the cave, his white hair gleaming argentine, as if his
poor blind head were the very goal of the heavenly progress. He
turned round.
"Will it pe a fire? She feels something warm on her head," he
said, rolling his sightless orbs, upon which the splendour broke
waveless, casting a grim shadow of him on the jagged rock behind.
"No," answered Mr Graham; "it is the sun you feel. He's just out
of his grave."
The old man gave a grunt.
"I often think," said the schoolmaster to Malcolm, "that possibly
the reason why we are told so little about the world we are going
to, is, that no description of it would enter our minds any more
than a description of that sunrise would carry a notion of its
reality into the mind of your grandfather.
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