Late in the afternoon we came to the marshy lakes, "the waters of Merom," where Joshua smote the kings of the north, who made a final stand here with their united armies, "like the sands of the sea in number." We should have been glad to find one of their royal palaces in tolerable repair, for we were tired and wanted to stop for the night, but there were no ruined regal mansions in sight, not even a mud hut such as had given us shelter and hunting at Jenin. The sun had gone down, and our horses shivered in the night air. The prospect was gloomy, and grew no brighter as we went on. At last we saw some long black tents across the plain sheltered by the hills; and, while we were wondering what the chances might be of escaping robbery by the Bedawin at this late hour of the night, the Kurd turned his horse out of the bridle-path and headed for the largest tent. The probabilities seemed now about equal that the Kurd was in league with these wild, wandering tribes, and that they would pluck us, and torture us, and bury us without the aid of undertaker or parson, or, on the other hand, that they might welcome us to the few comforts within their command. The sheik was standing, with a half-dozen of his leading men, at the door of his tent, and, as we dismounted, he came forward with much grace and dignity and embraced my friend, kissing him on each cheek. He only waved his hand to me, as a younger and less important personage, and led us into his tent. Cushions were thrown down for us on the bare earth, and we were told to be seated. A little fire was burning just in front of the tent, and around that the privileged persons of the tribe squatted, only the chief and some of his great warriors being under the tent with ourselves. They were as curious as civilized people to know where we were going, and why; and they concealed with difficulty their surprise and suspicion when they were told that our only object was to see the country. No Oriental, much less a Bedawin, ranks that among possible reasons for passing from one place to another. After more conversation than we thought necessary before supper, a dish of rice was brought in, and with it two wooden spoons; but how these came to be in a sheik's tent we thought it wise not to ask. They looked on while we ate, refusing all our entreaties to join with us; but when we had finished, they thrust their hands into the bowl, and, with a deft movement, made round balls as large as a lemon, and shot these with great skill into their mouths. While they ate, my friend asked if he might read them a story. They consented eagerly; and, taking out his Arabic Testament, he read them the parable of the Prodigal Son. A more appreciative company never listened to it. At each crisis of the narrative the sheik looked around and said, "Fayib ketir,"—"Very good,"—and then, as if devoutly making the responses, they all said, "Fayib ketir" I thought I saw one of them brush away a tear as the story was finished: perhaps he was a father with a prodigal son, or something in his heart may have told him that he was a prodigal himself.
They all rose at a signal, and left us to our slumbers. We were to share the tent with the sheik; and when we had laid ourselves down on the cushions and covered ourselves with our overcoats, the sheik came anxiously to my friend and asked "if we would not be very cold with nothing over our heads." The Oriental lets his feet take care of themselves if only his head is warm. The flap of the tent was not lowered, and we could look from where we were lying on the Eastern hills and the stars above them. It was long before I could sleep in such surroundings. We were unprotected in the tent of a Bedawin sheik on the waters of Merom, and all the past faded away: for the moment I did not believe that there were such cities as New York and London and Paris,—they were buried deep under the streets of Jerusalem and Tiberias and Safed. I was no longer an American, but the son of this sheik, destined to be the ruler of all the tribes that dwell in black tents of hair-cloth. My friend lying at my side groaned in his sleep, and the baseless fabric of my dream crumbled. I was myself again, and felt a sharp blow from my own familiar conscience when I found myself smiling with vengeful satisfaction at certain movements of my sleeping friend that made it apparent he was being visited by certain inhabitants of the night that find their way to Bedawin tents as well as peasants' huts. He had been almost untouched when I suffered so at Jenin; and I found my confidence increased in the law of compensation as I watched his struggles, wholly unscathed myself.
Our next day's work was the longest and hardest we had yet had. We were to crowd two days into one. We were well on our way before it was fairly light. We crossed the Jordan on a little stone bridge, and rode straight over the plain to Banias, the Caesarea Philippi of apostolic times. We left our horses in the little village near which the Jordan comes pouring out of a rocky opening in the hills, and, with an Arab boy, hurried at our best pace up the mountain to the magnificent ruins of a mediaeval castle, the finest of its class in the Holy Land. Our Kurd and muleteer were waiting for us as we came down the hill like veritable mountain-goats, and the latter pointed triumphantly to something wrapped in an Arab newspaper under his arm. As soon as we were out of sight of the village he stopped and displayed his prize: it was a chicken, cooked in some unknown but most savory way. It was long since we had eaten anything of the sort, and, leaping to the ground, with the help of a clasp-knife bought in Nablous, the only eating-utensil our party could boast, we bisected our dinner, and, sitting under a gray old gnarled olive, ate it with such expressions of satisfaction as would not be honest, even if allowable, at the grandest civilized banquets.
We sprang again into our saddles, crossed again the plain and the bridge over the Jordan, and pushed over the hills toward Deir Mimas. Our horses were used up even more completely than ourselves; and when the Kurd lost the way, and took us a long and unnecessary détour, we felt it so keenly that we said nothing. It was long after nightfall when we dismounted at the door of a native Christian preacher's house at Deir Mimas. But the struggles of the day were not ended. The Kurd stalked in, and, saying that here his duties ended, demanded a sum at least a third greater than that agreed upon. We fought him with everything but weapons, and, when we separated, the Kurd's pockets were heavier and his heart lighter than was consistent with the eternal fitness of things. We had only to follow a well-made road the next day to Sidon; and there, as we sat at a table spread with a clean, white cloth, on which were plates, and knives and forks, and cups and saucers, and spoons, we concluded that our roughing it in Palestine had at least convinced us that civilized man makes himself want many convenient if not wholly necessary things.
CHARLES WOOD.
* * * * *
THE EYE OF A NEEDLE.
"I don't know which way to turn to get the fall tailorin' done, now Mirandy Daggett's been and had money left to her," said, in an aggrieved tone, the buxom mistress of the Wei by poor-farm, as she briskly hung festoons of pumpkins, garners of the yellowest of the summer sunshine, along the beams of the great wood-shed chamber. "The widow Pingree, from over Sharon way, she's so wasteful, I declare it makes my blood run cold to see her cuttin' and slashin' into good cloth; and Emerline Johnson she's so scantin', the menfolks all looks like scarecrows, with their legs and arms a-stickin' out. Mirandy's got faculty."
"Seems if 'twa'n't no more'n yesterday that I was carryin' victuals to keep that child from starvin', and now she's an heiress, and here I be. Well, the Lord's ways ain't ourn."
A little old woman, twisted all awry by a paralytic shock, who was feebly assisting the poor-mistress, uttered these reflections in a high-keyed, quavering voice. She was called old lady Peaseley, and a halo of aristocracy encircled her, although she had been in the poor-house thirty years, for her grandfather had been the first minister of Welby.