The King's Talisman — page 14: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE KINGS TALISMAN. CHAPTER I. THE DERVISE AND HIS PUPIL. In the midst of ancient Idumea, like a giant sentinel, pointing its granite finger heavenward, towers aloft the barren, rugged peak of Mount Hor. The hot sun was pouring down its scorching rays upon the rocks and sands, and as the shadows of the craggy. cliffs fell upon the smoother surfaces, they told to the practiced eye that the day-king had reached the meridian of his noon- tide power. 'T'wo-thirds of the way up the mountain the rock ran ae | to a wide, shelving plain, upon one side of which, from a small crevice in the otherwise solid granite, trickled a spring of clear water; while still farther back a deep cavern opened its jaws, revealing nothing beyond but chaotic darkness—a _ darkness within the deepest secrets of which only one living being had ever penetrated. Stretching away, as far as the eye could reach, lay spread out an almost endless waste of gently undulating sand, with here and there a black rock or oasis to relieve the desert plain; but nearer in toward the © mountain, the eye might rest upon a scene that not only Gomicbooks (Eo)