rd attempt the
shore was reached. The people on the shore said it was a miracle; but
he, wasting no words upon any one, directed his way all alone along
the shore of the haven, and leaving behind him the lofty turreted row
of bastions--which crowns the edge of the rocky promontory, encircles
the town, and hangs upon the shoulders of the hill like an ancient and
gigantic necklace--picked his way among the lofty, scattered bowlders,
and, unescorted as he was, quickly disappeared from view amid the
wilderness.

He had scarcely proceeded more than half an hour among the fig and
olive trees which covered the slopes of the hills, and whose scorched
and withered leaves marked the passage of the burning wind, when he
arrived at the place he sought. It was a crazy, tumble-down hut, whose
shapeless mass was so clumsily compounded of wood, stone, and mud,
that a swallow would have been ashamed to own it, let alone a beaver,
whose ordinary habitation is an architectural masterpiece compared
with it. Nature, however, had been gracious to this shanty, and
clothed it with creeping plants, which nearly hid away all the
superfluous cracks and crevices which the architect had left behind
him.

It was here that the new-comer dismounted from his horse, tied it to a
tree, and, proceeding to the latchless door, amused himself by reading
the scrawl which had been written on the outside of it, and was, as
usual, one of those sacred texts which the Turks love to see over
their door-posts: "Accursed be he who disturbs a singing-bird!"

The stranger fell a listening. Surely there was no singing-bird here,
he thought. Then he went on reading what followed: "He who knocks at
the gate of him who prays will knock in vain at the gate of Paradise."

The stranger did not take the trouble to knock; he simply kicked the
door down.

Within was kneeling an anchorite of the order of Erdbuhar on a piece
of matting. He was naked to the girdle, and before him stood a wooden
tub full of fresh water. He was just finishing his ablutions.

He did not seem to observe the violent inroad of the stranger, but
concluded his religious exercises with great fervor. First of all he
washed his hands, reciting thirty times the sacred words, "Blessed be
God, Who hath given to water its purifying power, and hath revealed
the true faith to us!" Next he thrice conveyed water to his mouth in
his right palm, and prayed, "O Lord! O Allah! refresh me with the
water Thou didst