“Now, there are some ruins that you might very well examine,” he said, pointing upwards with the barrel of his gun. “Shall we dismount and climb up?”
“To see these?” said the professor quietly; and then a change came over his countenance, and he laughed softly as he turned round to look his travelling companion in the face. “Which stones do you want to look at?” he said.
“Those, sir, those,” cried Mr Burne fiercely. “Can’t you see?”
“No,” said the professor smiling; “I do not know which you mean, whether it is the building stones or the plum stones.”
“Tchah!” ejaculated the old gentleman, with his face puckering up into a comical grin. “There, come along.”
Yussuf smiled too as he rode on, and at the end of a few moments he said gravely:
“The plums would not have been worth gathering, effendi. They are a bitter, sour kind.”
“Grapes are too, when the fox cannot reach them—eh, Lawrence?”
No more was said, for every one was exhausted with the long slow ride. The little wind there was came from behind, and they were wandering in and out to such an extent that the soft mountain-breeze was completely shut off, and the horses were beginning to suffer terribly now from want of water to quench their burning thirst.
At last, in front, that for which they had been hoping to see appeared to be at hand, for a patch of broad green bushes at the foot of a rock told plainly that their fresh growth must be the result of abundant watering at the roots, and, pressing onward, to their delight the horses proved the correctness of their belief by breaking into a canter, and soon carrying them to where the defile ended in one of larger extent, at whose junction a spring of clear water gushed from the foot of a rock, and Lawrence cried eagerly: