we can fly the holy place."

The Israelite obeyed and waited, searching the darkness with eager eyes.

Now the edge of the great moon appeared upon the horizon, and by degrees
her white rays of light revealed a strange scene to the watchers. About
an open space of ground, some eighty paces in diameter, grew seven huge
and ancient baobab trees, so ancient indeed that they must have been
planted by the primæval hand of nature rather than by that of man. Aziel
and his companion were hidden with their mules behind the trunk of one
of these trees, and looking round it they perceived that the open space
beyond the shadow of the branches was not empty. In the centre of this
space stood an altar, and by it was placed the rude figure of a divinity
carved in wood and painted. On the head of this figure rose a crescent
symbolical of the moon, and round its neck hung a chain of wooden stars.
It had four wings but no hands, and of these wings two were out-spread
and two clasped a shapeless object to its breast, intended, apparently,
to represent a child. By these symbols Aziel knew that before him was
an effigy sacred to the goddess of the Phoenicians, who in different
countries passed by the various names of Astarte, or Ashtoreth, or
Baaltis, and who in their coarse worship was at once the personification
of the moon and the emblem of fertility.

Standing before this rude fetish, between it and the altar, whereon lay
some flowers, and in such fashion that the moonlight struck full upon
her, was a white-robed woman. She was young and very beautiful both in
shape and feature, and though her black hair streaming almost to the
knees took from her height, she still seemed tall. Her rounded arms were
outstretched; her sweet and passionate face was upturned towards the
sky, and even at that distance the watchers could see her deep eyes