h for chase and war, rode
behind the bishop on half-starved, raw-boned horses, inured by desert
training and bad times to do the maximum of work upon the minimum of
food.

For the first few miles they rode in silence, through ruined villages
and desolated farms, from which here and there a single inhabitant
peeped forth fearfully, to pour his tale of woe into the ears of the
hapless bishop, and then, instead of asking alms from him, to entreat
his acceptance of some paltry remnant of grain or poultry, which had
escaped the hands of the marauders; and as they clung to his hands, and
blessed him as their only hope and stay, poor Synesius heard patiently
again and again the same purposeless tale of woe, and mingled his tears
with theirs, and then spurred his horse on impatiently, as if to escape
from the sight of misery which he could not relieve; while a voice in
Raphael's heart seemed to ask him--'Why was thy wealth given to thee,
but that thou mightest dry, if but for a day, such tears as these?'

And he fell into a meditation which was not without its fruit in due
season, but which lasted till they had left the enclosed country, and
were climbing the slopes of the low rolling hills, over which lay the
road from the distant sea. But as they left the signs of war behind
them, the volatile temper of the good bishop began to rise. He petted
his hounds, chatted to his men, discoursed on the most probable quarter
for finding game, and exhorted them cheerfully enough to play the man,
as their chance of having anything to eat at night depended entirely on
their prowess during the day.

'Ah!' said Raphael at last, glad of a pretext for breaking his own chain
of painful thought, 'there is a vein of your land-salt. I suspect
that you were all at the bottom of the sea once, and that the old
Earth-shaker Neptune, tired of your bad ways, gave you a lift one
morning, and set you up as dry land, in order to be rid of you.'

'It may really be so. They say that the Argonauts returned back through
this country from the Southern Ocean, which must have been therefore far
nearer us than it is now, and that they carried their mystic vessel over
these very hills to the Syrtis. However, we have forgotten all about
the sea thoroughly enough since that time. I well remember my first
astonishment at the side of a galley in Alexandria, and the roar of
laughter with which my fellow-students greeted my not unreasonable
remark, that it looked ver