roads:  it was that sort of matter in which Tyndale thought he could discern “the form and potency of life.”  They were both there, and in the still darkness they made themselves felt.  My friend, for some mysterious reason, was left untouched, but the regiments that should have quartered on him joined those that were banqueting on my too unsolid flesh.  My sufferings were but slightly mitigated by the remembrance that probably the progenitors of these fierce feeders on human blood may have dined as sumptuously on prophets and apostles, and that, intense as my anguish was, the chances were against any fatal termination.  I rose often and went to the door, hoping for the morning, but it came not.  Each time on returning to my couch I found the number of my tormentors had been augmented:  so I kept still, like an Indian at the stake, and only refrained for my friend’s sake from singing a triumphant song as I found myself growing used to the pain and at last able to sleep a troubled sort of sleep, such as Damiens may have had on the rack.  When I showed my arms in the morning to Hassan, he lifted his eyes to heaven and muttered a prayer to Allah, of which I thought I could divine the meaning.

Our ride that day was across the great plain of Esdraelon.  We were charitable enough to believe that travellers who have raved over the exquisite beauty of this valley, who tell of “the green meadow-land flaming with masses of red anemones,” of “myriads of nodding daisies,” and of “sheets of burning azure in the sun,” did actually look upon all these splendors in the early spring; but it was January now, and we seemed to be pushing our way through a sea of dull, dead brown.  The ground was soft with the winter rains, and our horses’ feet sank to the fetlocks and gathered huge balls of the thick adhesive earth, deposited every hundred yards or so to give place to others.  We rode through the dirty little village of Nain, where once a widow’s son, carried out to burial, heard the only voice that reaches the dead and rose from his bier; but all solemn and tender thoughts were frightened away by the crowd of maimed and blind and ragged and hungry men, women, and children that came pouring out of the huts, crying, begging, demanding backsheesh.  “This,” one of our American consuls said, “is the language of Canaan now;” and it is one of the least melodious of earth.  We lunched on the dry grass in the sun in full sight of Tabor, on the remnants of what the good missionary at Nablous had given us, and, tightening our saddle-girths, we began the ascent of the mountain.  We clambered up the rude bridle-path, covered with loose stones, and knocked timidly, with the remembrance of our Nablous experiences, at the door of a large and very sightly monastery.  Almost immediately a monk of kindly face and soft black Italian eyes gave us a cordial greeting, and the unexpectedness of it nearly enticed us into throwing our arms around his neck and leaving an Oriental salutation upon his