ke us to "a most
comfortable place." When we stopped, it was before the door of a little
mud hut. An old woman opened it, but, before letting us in, fixed the
price we were to pay. We entered a room that did service for the entire
wants of our hostess. It was very small, but it could not have been made
larger without knocking out the sidewalls of her house. The floor was of
dry mud, and there was nothing to sit upon except our saddles. We supped
from the bread and meat our good missionary friend had given us, and,
rolling ourselves in our blankets, we slept; but not long. The mud
beneath us was not that dull, inanimate, clog-like thing we trample
thoughtlessly under our feet along our country roads: it was that sort
of matter in which Tyndale thought he could discern "the form and
potency of life." They were both there, and in the still darkness they
made themselves felt. My friend, for some mysterious reason, was left
untouched, but the regiments that should have quartered on him joined
those that were banqueting on my too unsolid flesh. My sufferings were
but slightly mitigated by the remembrance that probably the progenitors
of these fierce feeders on human blood may have dined as sumptuously on
prophets and apostles, and that, intense as my anguish was, the chances
were against any fatal termination. I rose often and went to the door,
hoping for the morning, but it came not. Each time on returning to my
couch I found the number of my tormentors had been augmented: so I kept
still, like an Indian at the stake, and only refrained for my friend's
sake from singing a triumphant song as I found myself growing used to
the pain and at last able to sleep a troubled sort of sleep, such as
Damiens may have had on the rack. When I showed my arms in the morning
to Hassan, he lifted his eyes to heaven and muttered a prayer to Allah,
of which I thought I could divine the meaning.

Our ride that day was across the great plain of Esdraelon. We were
charitable enough to believe that travellers who have raved over the
exquisite beauty of this valley, who tell of "the green meadow-land
flaming with masses of red anemones," of "myriads of nodding daisies,"
and of "sheets of burning azure in the sun," did actually look upon all
these splendors in the early spring; but it was January now, and we
seemed to be pushing our way through a sea of dull, dead brown. The
ground was soft with the winter rains, and our horses' feet sank to the
fetl