tle beast starts away, and ceases its game with loud bleating.

It was just as if the girl had been waiting for the right moment to hit
the kid sharply; for the kick was a hard one-almost a cruel one. The
blue cloth hid the face of the maiden, but her eyes must surely have
sparkled brightly when she so roughly stopped the game. For a minute she
remained motionless; but the cloth, which had fallen low over her
face, waved gently to and fro, moved by her fluttering breath. She
was listening with eager attention, with passionate expectation; her
convulsively clenched toes betrayed her.

Then a noise became audible; it came from the direction of the rough
stair of unhewn blocks, which led from the steep wall of the ravine down
to the spring. A shudder of terror passed through the tender, and not
yet fully developed limbs of the shepherdess; still she did not move;
the grey birds which were now sitting on a thorn-bush near her flew up,
but they had merely heard a noise, and could not distinguish who it was
that it announced.

The shepherdess's ear was sharper than theirs. She heard that a man was
approaching, and well knew that one only trod with such a step. She put
out her hand for a stone that lay near her, and flung it into the spring
so that the waters immediately became troubled; then she turned on her
side, and lay as if asleep with her head on her arm. The heavy steps
became more and more distinctly audible.

A tall youth was descending the rocky stair; by his dress he was seen
to be one of the anchorites of Sinai, for he wore nothing but a
shirt-shaped garment of coarse linen, which he seemed to have outgrown,
and raw leather sandals, which were tied on to his feet with fibrous
palm-bast.

No slave could be more poorly clothed by his owner and yet no one would
have taken him for a bondman, for he walked erect and self-possessed.
He could not be more than twenty years of age; that was evident in the
young soft hair on his upper lip, chin, and cheeks; but in his large
blue eyes there shone no light of youth, only discontent, and his lips
were firmly closed as if in defiance.

He now stood still, and pushed back from his forehead the superabundant
and unkempt brown hair that flowed round his head like a lion's mane;
then he approached the well, and as he stooped to draw the water in the
large dried gourd-shell which he held, he observed first that the spring
was muddy, and then perceived the goats, and at last th