? Then I will proceed.

'He came into this village of the Maronites, and, being thirsty,
looked in at a doorway. He saw the village priest and all his family
engaged in stuffing a fat sheep with mulberry leaves. The sheep was
tethered half-way up the steps which led on to the housetop. The
priest and his wife, together with their eldest girl, sat on the
ground below, amid a heap of mulberry boughs; and all the other
children sat, one on every step, passing up the leaves, when ready, to
the second daughter, whose business was to force the sheep to go on
eating. This they would do until the sheep, too full to stand, fell
over on its side, when they would slaughter it for their supply of
fat throughout the coming year.

'So busy were they in this occupation that they did not see the
stranger in the doorway until he shouted: "Peace upon this house," and
asked them for a drink of water kindly. Even then the priest did not
disturb himself, but, saying "Itfaddal!" pointed to a pitcher standing
by the wall. The guest looked into it and found it dry.

'"No water here," he said.

'"Oh," sighed the priest, "to-day we are so thirsty with this work
that we have emptied it, and so busy that the children have forgotten
to refill it. Rise, O Nesibeh, take the pitcher on thy head, and
hasten to the spring and bring back water for our guest."

'The girl Nesibeh, who was fourteen years of age, rose up obediently,
shaking off the mulberry leaves and caterpillars from her clothing.
Taking up the pitcher, she went out through the village to the spring,
which gushed out of the rock beneath a spreading pear tree.

'There were so many people getting water at the moment that she could
not push her way among them, so sat down to wait her turn, choosing a
shady spot. She was a thoughtful girl, and, as she sat there waiting,
she was saying in her soul:

'"O soul, I am a big girl now. A year or two and mother will unite me
to a proper husband. The next year I shall have a little son. Again a
year or two, he will be big enough to run about; and his father will
make for him a pair of small red shoes, and he will come down to this
pleasant spring, as children do, to splash the water. Being a bold
lad, he will climb that tree."

'And then, as she beheld one great bough overhanging like a
stretched-out arm, and realised how dangerous it was for climbing
children, she thought:

'"He will fall down and break his neck."

'At once she burst out