once occupied by the veritable Witch of Endor.  In this cavern, tradition says, Saul, the king, sat at midnight, and stared and trembled, while the earth shook, the thunders crashed among the hills, and out of the midst of fire and smoke the spirit of the dead prophet rose up and confronted him.  Saul had crept to this place in the darkness, while his army slept, to learn what fate awaited him in the morrow’s battle.  He went away a sad man, to meet disgrace and death.

A spring trickles out of the rock in the gloomy recesses of the cavern, and we were thirsty.  The citizens of Endor objected to our going in there.  They do not mind dirt; they do not mind rags; they do not mind vermin; they do not mind barbarous ignorance and savagery; they do not mind a reasonable degree of starvation, but they do like to be pure and holy before their god, whoever he may be, and therefore they shudder and grow almost pale at the idea of Christian lips polluting a spring whose waters must descend into their sanctified gullets.  We had no wanton desire to wound even their feelings or trample upon their prejudices, but we were out of water, thus early in the day, and were burning up with thirst.  It was at this time, and under these circumstances, that I framed an aphorism which has already become celebrated.  I said:  “Necessity knows no law.”  We went in and drank.

We got away from the noisy wretches, finally, dropping them in squads and couples as we filed over the hills—­the aged first, the infants next, the young girls further on; the strong men ran beside us a mile, and only left when they had secured the last possible piastre in the way of bucksheesh.

In an hour, we reached Nain, where Christ raised the widow’s son to life.  Nain is Magdala on a small scale.  It has no population of any consequence.  Within a hundred yards of it is the original graveyard, for aught I know; the tombstones lie flat on the ground, which is Jewish fashion in Syria.  I believe the Moslems do not allow them to have upright tombstones.  A Moslem grave is usually roughly plastered over and whitewashed, and has at one end an upright projection which is shaped into exceedingly rude attempts at ornamentation.  In the cities, there is often no appearance of a grave at all; a tall, slender marble tombstone, elaborately lettred, gilded and painted, marks the burial place, and this is surmounted by a turban, so carved and shaped as to signify the dead man’s rank in life.

They showed a fragment of ancient wall which they said was one side of the gate out of which the widow’s dead son was being brought so many centuries ago when Jesus met the procession: 

     “Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold there was a
     dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a
     widow:  and much people of the city was with her.

     “And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said, Weep
     not.