"You are travelling through the district, and you don't know the
mountain?" said the hermit. "If you are a Jew, incline your face to
the earth and kiss it. It is the spot where eternity floated down from
Sinai."

"That--the Mountain of the Law?"

"See how it stretches forth its fingers swearing. As true as God
lives!"

Joseph bowed down and kissed the ground. Mary looked at the stony
mountain with a thrill of awe. Little Jesus slept in the shade of the
thorn-bush. The threatening rock and the lovely child. There dark
menaces, and here----?

Joseph tried to picture to himself the scene when Moses, on the summit
of the mountain, received the tables of stone from Jehovah. Then a
cloud slowly covered the mountain top as if to veil the secret. Joseph
was ashamed of his presumption and kept silence. Before he departed he
cut a bough from the thorn-bush and pulled off the leaves and twigs, so
that it formed a pilgrim's staff for the rest of the journey. They
were always meeting new dangers. And one day a hunter of the desert
came running after them. They were not frightened of his tiger skin,
but of what he had to tell them. If they had come from Judaea with
their boy, they had better hasten into the land of Egypt, for Herod's
men were on their track. So they had no rest until at last they came
to the land of the Pharaohs. But one day they found themselves not on
its frontier, but on the seashore. They were dumb with astonishment.
There lay the sea, its waves dashing against the black, jagged cliffs,
and beyond them was a smooth, level plain as far as the eye could see.