has found the society of this cenoby too numerous for him, so he retired to a ruin, hoping to draw himself nearer to God.  But even he must have a living thing by him; and then, his thoughts changing, he fell to thinking of the day when he would ride out to meet Jesus among the hills.  His happiness was so intense in the prospect that he delighted in all he saw and heard:  in the flight of doves that had just left their cotes and were flying now across the gorge, and in the soothing chant of the water rising out of the dusk.

Jesus had told him that the gorge was never without water.  The spring that fed it rose out of the earth as by enchantment.  Hazael’s voice interrupted his reveries:  would you like, Sir, to visit our house? he asked, and he threw open the door and showed a great room, common to all.  On either side of it, he said, are cells, six on one side, four on the other, and into these cells the brethren retire after breaking bread, and it is in this domed gallery we sit at food.  But Jesus has spoken to thee of these things, for though we do not speak to strangers of our rule of life, Jesus would not have transgressed in speaking of it to thee.  Joseph asked for news of Banu, and was sorry to hear that he had been killed and partially eaten by a lion.

The tidings seemed to affect Jesus strangely; he covered his face with his hands, and Hazael repented having spoken of Banu, guessing that the hermit’s death carried Jesus’ thoughts into a past time that he would shut out for ever from his mind.  He atoned, however, for his mistake by an easy transition which carried their discourse into an explanation of the dissidence that had arisen among the brethren, and which, he said, compelled us to come hither.  The Essenes are celibates, and it used to be my duty to go in search of young men whom I might judge to be well disposed towards God, and to bring them hither with me so that they might see what our life is, and, discovering themselves to be true servants of the Lord, adopt a life as delightful and easy to those who love God truly as it is hard to them whose thoughts are set on the world and its pleasures.  I have travelled through Palestine often in search of such young men, and many who came with me are still with me.  It was in Nazareth that we met, he said, and he stretched his hand to Jesus.  Dost remember?  And without more he pursued his story.

The brother, however, who succeeded me as missionary brought back only young men who, after a few months trial, fell away.  It would be unjust for me to say that the fault was with the missionary:  times are not as they used to be; the spirit of the Lord is not so rife nor so ardent now as it was once, and the dwindling of our order was the reason given for the proposal that some of us should take wives.  The argument put forward was that the children born of these marriages would be more likely than other children to understand our oaths of renunciation of