from the midst of that life for which he yearned, accustomed as
he was to be surrounded day and night by the deep and lonely stillness
of the rocky heights.

He stayed his steps, and his eyes followed the thin columns of smoke,
which floated tremulously up in the clear light of the ever mounting sun
from the numerous hearths that lay below him.

"They are cooking breakfast now," thought he, "the wives for their
husbands, the mothers for their children, and there, where that dark
smoke rises, very likely a splendid feast is being prepared for guests;
but I am nowhere at home, and no one will invite me in." The contest
with Paulus had excited and cheered him, but the sight of the city
filled his young heart with renewed bitterness, and his lips trembled
as he looked down on his sheepskin and his unwashed limbs. With hasty
resolve he turned his back on the oasis and hurried up the mountain.
By the side of the brooklet that he knew of he threw off his coarse
garment, let the cool water flow over his body, washed himself carefully
and with much enjoyment, stroked clown his thick hair with his fingers,
and then hurried down again into the valley.

The gorge through which he had descended debouched by a hillock that
rose from the valley-plain; a small newly-built church leaned against
its eastern declivity, and it was fortified on all sides by walls and
dikes, behind which the citizens found shelter when they were threatened
by the Saracen robbers of the oasis. This hill passed for a particularly
sacred spot. Moses was supposed to have prayed on its summit during the
battle with the Amalekites while his arms were held up by Aaron and Hur.

But there were other notable spots in the neighborhood of the oasis.
There farther to the north was the rock whence Moses had struck the
water; there higher up, and more to the south-east, was the hill, where
the Lord had spoken to the law-giver face to face, and where he had
seen the burning bush; there again was the spring where he had met the
daughters of Jethro, Zippora and Ledja, so called in the legend. Pious
pilgrims came to these holy places in great numbers, and among them many
natives of the peninsula, particularly Nabateans, who had previously
visited the holy mountain in order to sacrifice on its summit to their
gods, the sun, moon, and planets. At the outlet, towards the north,
stood a castle, which ever since the Syrian Prefect, Cornelius Palma,
had subdued Arabia Petraea i