lked as he had done to the
president? He could not tell: and it must have been while lying on his
right side, trying to understand himself, what he was and why he was in
the cenoby, that he fell into that deep and dreamless sleep from which
he was awakened by a bell, and so suddenly that it seemed to him that he
had not been asleep more than a few minutes. It was no doubt the bell
for morning prayer: and only half awake he repaired with the other
proselytes to the part of the village open to the sunrise.

All the Essenes were assembled there, and he learnt that they looked
upon this prayer of thanksgiving for the return of light as the
important event of the day. He joined in it, though he suspected a
certain idolatry in the prayer. It seemed to him that the Essenes were
praying for the sun to rise; but to do this would be to worship the sun
in some measure, and to look upon the sun as in some degree a God, he
feared; but the Essenes were certainly very pious Jews. What else they
were, time would reveal to him: a few days would be enough; and long
before the prayer was finished he was thinking of his father in Galilee
and what his face would tell, were he to see his son bowing before the
sun. But the Essenes were not really worshipping the sun but praying to
God that the sun might rise and give them light again to continue their
daily work. One whole day at least he must spend in the cenoby,
and--feeling that he was becoming interested again in the Essenes--he
began to form a plan to stay some time with them.

On rising from his knees, he thought he might stay for some weeks. But
if the Essene brotherhood succeeded in persuading him that his fate was
to abandon his father and the trade that awaited him in Galilee and the
wife who awaited him somewhere? His father often said: Joseph, you are
the last of our race. I hope to see with you a good wife who will bear
you children, for I should like to bless my grandchildren before I die.
The Essenes would at least free him from the necessity of telling his
father that there was no heart in him for a wife; and if he did not take
a wife, he might become---- One of the curators whispered to him the use
he should make of the little axe, and he followed the other proselytes;
and having found a place where the earth was soft, each dug a hole about
a foot deep, into which they eased themselves, afterwards filling up the
hole with the earth that had been taken out. Joseph then went do