small grey birds too float softly in the pure, light air of the desert
that glows in the noonday sun, and then they vanish behind a range of
cliffs, which shuts in the deep gorge as though it were a wall built by
man.

There it is pleasant enough, for a spring bedews the stony soil and
there, as wherever any moisture touches the desert, aromatic plants
thrive, and umbrageous bushes grow. When Osiris embraced the goddess of
the desert--so runs the Egyptian myth--he left his green wreath on her
couch.

But at the time and in the sphere where our history moves the old legends
are no longer known or are ignored. We must carry the reader back to the
beginning of the thirtieth year of the fourth century after the birth of
the Saviour, and away to the mountains of Sinai on whose sacred ground
solitary anchorites have for some few years been dwelling--men weary of
the world, and vowed to penitence, but as yet without connection or rule
among themselves.

Near the spring in the little ravine of which we have spoken grows a
many-branched feathery palm, but it does not shelter it from the piercing
rays of the sun of those latitudes; it seems only to protect the roots of
the tree itself; still the feathered boughs are strong enough to support
a small thread-bare blue cloth, which projects like a penthouse,
screening the face of a girl who lies dreaming, stretched at full-length
on the glowing stones, while a few yellowish mountain-goats spring from
stone to stone in search of pasture as gaily as though they found the
midday heat pleasant and exhilarating. From time to time the girl seizes
the herdsman's crook that lies beside her, and calls the goats with a
hissing cry that is audible at a considerable distance. A young kid