I think they had a boy with them, if you can come up with them."

And the horsemen galloped on. Meanwhile the fugitives from Nazareth
had reached bad roads, and were tired and wretched. Was not Jacob's
favourite son also taken into Egypt just like this child? What will
become of this one? They became aware of their pursuers galloping
behind over the bare plain. Not a tree, not a shrub which could afford
them protection. They took refuge in the cleft of a rock, but Joseph
said: "What is the use of hiding? They must have seen us." But as
soon as they were well inside the dark hole, down came a spider from
the mossy wall, summoned all her brood and her most distant relations
in great haste, and they speedily spun a web over the opening, a web
that was stronger than the iron railings in Solomon's temple, at the
entrance to the Holy of Holies. Hardly was the weaving finished when
the knaves came riding up. One said: "They crept into the hole in the
rock."

"What!" shouted another, "no one could have crept in there since the
time of David the shepherd. Look at the thick cobwebs."

"That's true," they laughed, and straightway rode off.

An old man who seemed to have risen from the grave now stood before the
dusky woman who had denied her own son and betrayed the stranger
wanderers. Whence he came he did not know himself. He loved the
lonely desert, the home of great thoughts. He did not fear the robbers
of the desert, for he was stronger than they because he had nothing.
Now and again the desire came to him to behold a human face, so that he
might read therein whether the souls of men looked upwards or sank
downwards. The old man went up to the woman who had denied her own son