the monastery and watched the sunlight play upon her brows and hair.  Could this thing, so divinely beautiful, be the creation of the devil to destroy men’s souls?  His reason revolted against it.  If so, the warm sunlight and radiant sky and air, the flowers and the purple hills, his weary eyes strained out to must be also the devil’s work, for all these things were akin, and the woman passing amongst them was but the masterpiece made by the same hand.

“Say,” he had said wearily, one night, to a monk passing him like a silent shadow on his way to his cell.  “Is all the world the work of the devil?”

“Nay, brother, what blasphemy!” returned the other, startled beyond measure.  “It is all the work of God” and Nicholas had passed into his cell well pleased.  And the next evening he had called softly to the masterpiece of the Creator, as she went by, and the girl, startled and fearful at first, had spoken a few words out of sheer pity for the hungry, lonely soul looking out so wistfully at her; and then how soon had come other meetings, the plan to escape—­that final vision which had seemed to justify him,—­and now the flight!

“Will the boat be there! will they wait for us?” he asked eagerly, as they walked swiftly on.

“Yes, I heard the boat was coming over from the Jewish Colony beyond the Dead Sea, and I sent word down it was to take me in it when it left again,” the girl replied, “We shall get down there to-morrow evening; we will go to old Solomon’s house; he will let us stay with him one night, and in the morning we must get down to the shore and the boat.”

Nicholas pressed her hand as they walked on.  How wise she was, this little Jewish girl!  She had lived her short life in the world, and knew her way about in it so well.  And he, so much older, felt like a child beside her, after all those long, deadening, numbing years in the monastery.

Five miles more of the white, stony road were traversed, winding in and out, but always descending between the barren desolate hills of the wilderness, and then Esther said with a little sob in her voice: 

“We must stop here now and rest, I am so tired.  I cannot go any further to-night.”

“Tired?” he echoed wonderingly.  Could he ever feel tired now?  His feet seemed borne on wings.  But he stopped, and bending over her, lifted and carried her tenderly from the starlit road to a large rock jutting out from the hillside.  Here, in the shadow on the farther side, they lay down, and the girl fell at once into the deep sleep of utter bodily fatigue.  The man lay open-eyed clasping her to him, his brain on fire with freedom, listening with joy to the cries of the wandering wild animals amongst the hills.

The following evening, late, they reached the plain.  The wilderness lay behind them, and in front, beyond the green darkness of the trees, they knew the starlight was gleaming on the Dead Sea.  The heat down here was suffocating, and their weary feet moved on slowly through the village—­a collection of a few white flat-roofed houses, which are all that now mark the spot where stood once the rich, mighty city of Jericho.  In the last house shone a light, and Esther led Nicholas towards it.