captains of a departed greatness. Hidden by the grey, massive walls,
built as it were to resist the onset of a ravaging foe, the swelling
voices might well have been those of some ancient order of valiant
knights, whose banners hung above them, the 'riclame' of their deeds.
But they were voices and voices only; for they who sang were as unkempt
and forceless as the lonely wall which shut them in from the insistent
soul of the desert.

Desolation? The desert was not desolate. Its face was bare and burning,
it slaked no man's thirst, gave no man food, save where scattered oases
were like the breasts of a vast mother eluding the aching lips of her
parched children; but the soul of the desert was living and inspiring,
beating with vitality. It was life that burned like flame. If the
water-skin was dry and the date-bag empty it smothered and destroyed; but
it was life; and to those who ventured into its embrace, obeying the
conditions of the sharp adventure, it gave what neither sea, nor green
plain, nor high mountain, nor verdant valley could give--a consuming
sense of power, which found its way to the deepest recesses of being.
Out upon the vast sea of sand, where the descending sun was spreading a
note of incandescent colour, there floated the grateful words:

"He remembering His mercy hath holpen His servant Israel; as He
promised to our forefathers, Abraham, and his seed for ever."

Then the antiphonal ceased; and together the voices of all within the
place swelled out in the Gloria and the Amen, and seemed to pass away in
ever-receding vibrations upon the desert, till it was lost in the
comforting sunset.

As the last note died away, a voice from beneath the palm-tree near the