smoke rises, very likely a splendid feast is being prepared for guests;
but I am nowhere at home, and no one will invite me in." The contest
with Paulus had excited and cheered him, but the sight of the city filled
his young heart with renewed bitterness, and his lips trembled as he
looked down on his sheepskin and his unwashed limbs. With hasty resolve
he turned his back on the oasis and hurried up the mountain. By the side
of the brooklet that he knew of he threw off his coarse garment, let the
cool water flow over his body, washed himself carefully and with much
enjoyment, stroked clown his thick hair with his fingers, and then
hurried down again into the valley.

The gorge through which he had descended debouched by a hillock that rose
from the valley-plain; a small newly-built church leaned against its
eastern declivity, and it was fortified on all sides by walls and dikes,
behind which the citizens found shelter when they were threatened by the
Saracen robbers of the oasis. This hill passed for a particularly sacred
spot. Moses was supposed to have prayed on its summit during the battle
with the Amalekites while his arms were held up by Aaron and Hur.

But there were other notable spots in the neighborhood of the oasis.
There farther to the north was the rock whence Moses had struck the
water; there higher up, and more to the south-east, was the hill, where
the Lord had spoken to the law-giver face to face, and where he had seen
the burning bush; there again was the spring where he had met the
daughters of Jethro, Zippora and Ledja, so called in the legend. Pious
pilgrims came to these holy places in great numbers, and among them many
natives of the peninsula, particularly Nabateans, who had previously
visited the holy mountain in order to sacrifice on its summit to their
gods, the sun, moon, and planets. At the outlet, towards the north,
stood a castle, which ever since the Syrian Prefect, Cornelius Palma, had