But the energy of the young spring was alive only in the birds and the blossoming orchards.  Wherever the solid houses fronted in unbroken rows the passages between, there were no open windows, no carpets swung from latticed balconies; no buyers moved up the roofed-over Street of Bazaars.  Not in all the range of the old man’s vision was to be seen a living human being.  For the chief city of the Philistine country Ascalon was nerveless and still.  At times immense and ponderous creaking sounded in the distance, as if a great rusted crane swung in the wind.  Again there were distant, voluminous flutterings, as if neglected and loosened sails flapped.  Idle roaming donkeys brayed and a dog shut up and forgotten in a compound barked incessantly.  Presently there came faint, far-off, failing cries that faded into silence.  The Jew’s brow contracted but he did not move.

From his position, he could see the port to the east packed with lifeless vessels.  The stretches of stone wharf and the mole were vacant and littered with rubbish.  The yard-arms of abandoned freighters were peculiarly beaded with tiny black shapes that moved from time to time.  Far out at sea, so far that a blue mist embraced its base and set its sails mysteriously afloat in air, a great galley, with all canvas crowded on, sped like a frightened bird past the port that had once been its haven.

A strange compelling odor stole up from the city.  Costobarus glanced down into his garden below him.  It was a terraced court, with vine-covered earthen retaining walls supporting each successive tier and terminating against a domed gate flanked on either side by a tall conical cypress.

He noted, on the flagging of the walk leading by flights of steps down to the gate, a heap of garments with broad brown and yellow stripes.  Wondering at the untidiness of his gardener in leaving his tunic here while he worked, Costobarus looked away toward the large stones that lay here and there in gutters and on grass-plots, remnants of the work of the Roman catapults the previous summer.  In the walls of houses were unrepaired breaches, where the wounds of the missiles showed.  On a slight eminence overlooking the city from the west center-poles of native cedar which had supported Roman tents were still standing.  But no garrison was there now, though the signs of the savage Roman obsession still lay on the remnants of the prostrate western wall.  So as Costobarus’ gaze wandered he did not see far above that heap of striped garments in his garden walk, fixed like an enchanted thing, moveless, dead-calm, a great desert vulture poised in air.  Presently another and yet another materialized out of the blue, growing larger as they fell down to the level of their fellow.  Slowly the three swooped down over the heap on the garden walk.  The tiny black shapes that beaded the yard-arms in port spread great wings and soared solemnly into Ascalon.  The three vultures dropped noiselessly on the pavement.