“Blessed woman, I’ve had great refreshment in being thus permitted to see thee face to face, and thank thee and thine for what thou hast done for me and mine; but I can not tarry; old age and poverty have bargained to make constant toil my master. I must keep moving or the swifter youths will take away my master and leave me to hire out to starvation;” so saying, the speaker smote his camel and the beast moved away, slowly, along the road toward Jerusalem.
Cornelius, recovering himself from his meditations, called after the departing Druse.
“What of this parchment?”
“The Hospitaler sent it! He said it would talk with ‘the Angels of the Mount.’”
The camel driver had stopped his beast to say this much. For a moment he looked at the missioners, then at their temple and its surroundings. There was a world of questioning, and wonder, and yearning in the old man’s countenance. Again his goad fell on the beast he rode and the latter bore him along.
“Shall we meet again, father?” Cornelius called after him.
“Stay master work! Go master want! ’Till good shade Death takes to the cool rest-land the holy Hospitaler, the Angels of the Mount, my Nourahmal, and may be me; even me the poor, old, camel-driver, Mahmood!” was the slow reply as the Druse departed. A turn in the road soon shut him from view.
“Well, my spouse, Miriamne, our new Bethany sees strange visitants these days,” remarked her husband.
“The mystic Druse is finding something that is finer than the creeds of his mountain clans,” rejoined Miriamne.
“Be not too certain; those Highlanders of Palestine are ever politic; they’ll quote the Koran to one of Islam, kiss the Bible in the company of Christians; but once alone are Druse to the last.”