the path almost on his haunches. A wonderful animal truly! Joseph said,
marvelling greatly; he guessed that the path lay under the mass of
rubble come down in some landslip. He knew he would meet it farther on:
he may have been this way before. A wonderful animal all the same, a
perfect animal, if he could be persuaded not to walk within ten inches
of the brink! and Joseph drew the mule away to the right, under the
hillside, but a few minutes after, divining that his rider's thoughts
were lost in those strange argumentations common to human beings, the
mule returned to the brink, out of reach of any projecting rocks. He was
happily content to follow the twisting road, giving no faintest
attention to the humped hills always falling into steep valleys and
always rising out of steep valleys, as round and humped as the hills
that were left behind. Joseph noticed the hills, but the mule did not:
he only knew the beginning and the end of his journey, whereas Joseph
began very soon to be concerned to learn how far they were come, and as
there was nobody about who could tell him he reined up his mule, which
began to seek herbage--a dandelion, an anemone, a tuft of wild
rosemary--while his rider meditated on the whereabouts of the inn. The
road, he said, winds round the highest of these hills, reaching at last
a tableland half-way between Jerusalem and Jericho, and on the top of it
is the inn. We shall see it as soon as yon cloud lifts.




CHAP. VI.


A few wanderers loitered about the inn: they came from Mount Sinai, so
the innkeeper said; he mentioned that they had a camel and an ass in the