door, deeper than any that had come from within, said reverently: "Ameen-
Ameen !"

He who spoke was a man well over sixty years, with a grey beard, lofty
benign forehead, and the eyes of a scholar and a dreamer. As he uttered
the words of spiritual assent, alike to the Muslim and the Christian
religion, he rose to his feet, showing the figure of a man of action,
alert, well-knit, authoritative. Presently he turned towards the East
and stretched a robe upon the ground, and with stately beauty of gesture
he spread out his hands, standing for a moment in the attitude of
aspiration. Then, kneeling, he touched his turbaned head to the ground
three times, and as the sun drew down behind the sharp, bright line of
sand that marked the horizon, he prayed devoutly and long. It was Ebn
Ezra Bey.

Muslim though he was, he had visited this monastery many times, to study
the ancient Christian books which lay in disordered heaps in an ill-kept
chamber, books which predated the Hegira, and were as near to the life of
the Early Church as the Scriptures themselves--or were so reputed.
Student and pious Muslim as he was, renowned at El Azhar and at every
Muslim university in the Eastern world, he swore by the name of Christ as
by that of Abraham, Isaac, and all the prophets, though to him Mahomet
was the last expression of Heaven's will to mankind. At first received
at the monastery with unconcealed aversion, and not without danger to
himself, he had at last won to him the fanatical monks, who, in spirit,
kept this ancient foundation as rigid to their faith as though it were in
mediaeval times. And though their discipline was lax, and their daily
duties orderless, this was Oriental rather than degenerate. Here Ebn
Ezra had stayed for weeks at a time in the past, not without some
religious scandal, long since forgotten.