f the Soul."

The company sat a moment in silence which was broken by Balthasar.

"Let us arise now," he said--"let us arise and set forward again.
What I have said has caused a return of impatience to see him
who is ever in my thought; and if I seem to hurry you, O son of
Hur--and you, my daughter--be that my excuse."

At his signal the slave brought them wine in a skin bottle;
and they poured and drank, and shaking the lap-cloths out arose.

While the slave restored the tent and wares to the box under the
houdah, and the Arab brought up the horses, the three principals
laved themselves in the pool.

In a little while they were retracing their steps back through
the wady, intending to overtake the caravan if it had passed
them by.

CHAPTER IV

The caravan, stretched out upon the Desert, was very picturesque;
in motion, however, it was like a lazy serpent. By-and-by its
stubborn dragging became intolerably irksome to Balthasar,
patient as he was; so, at his suggestion, the party determined
to go on by themselves.

If the reader be young, or if he has yet a sympathetic recollection
of the romanticisms of his youth, he will relish the pleasure with
which Ben-Hur, riding near the camel of the Egyptians, gave a last
look at the head of the straggling column almost out of sight on
the shimmering plain.

To be definite as may be, and perfectly confidential, Ben-Hur found
a certain charm in Iras's presence. If she looked down upon him from
her high place, he made haste to get near her; if she spoke to him,
his heart beat out of its usual time. The desire to be agreeable
to her was a constant impulse. Objects on the way, though ever
so common, became interesting the moment she called attention to
them; a black swallow in the air pursued by her pointing finger
went off in a halo; if a bit of quartz or a flake of mica was
seen to sparkle in the drab sand under kissing of the sun, at a
word he turned aside and brought it to her; and if she threw it
away in disappointment, far from thinking of the trouble he had
been put to, he was sorry it proved so worthless, and kept a
lookout for something better--a ruby, perchance a diamond. So the
purple of the far mountains became intensely deep and rich if she
distinguished it with an exclamation of praise; and when, now and
then, the curtain of the houdah fell down, it seemed a sudden
dulness had dropped from the sky bedraggling all the landscape.
Thus disposed, yield