thing, when Abdallah rides back slowly into camp, bringing in as a prisoner that very scout whom we had seen and chased near the brake. The wretch is more than half-dead with hunger and with fright. He is one of the Ehtaimât, a despised and mongrel race, too cowardly to fight, too lazy to work, who dwell among the ruins of Jericho, drawing wood and water for the Turks, exhibiting their lewd dances to the Franks, and acting as spies to the marauding tribes. Abdallah, having taken him under the tamarisks, making signs to the Salhaan across the river, understands his case; so slipping from his mare, and seizing a stout bramble, he leads the spy into my tent, points out to him the tabanjas, the fruit and fowls, the bread and tobacco, and after allowing him full time to feast his eyes on the white flesh, to fill his nostrils with the fumes of tea, catches him by the neck, thrusts him down the steep bank, forces him into the river, and with loud thwacks and curses, drives him upon the ford, and over it, in full view of his employers on the other side. Among Franks such an act would have raised every carbine against the insolent foe; but the sheikh seems to know his countrymen; for instead of these blows and curses causing the Salhaan to foam into passion, they seem to provide yon Bedaween with an admirable jest. The truth perhaps is, that the whole affair has been a game of brag, which the Bedaween begin to see that they have played and lost.

A voice from the other bank now calls a parley. Yakoub explains to me, aside, that the Ehtaimât

The Holy Land. I.

16

spy having told his tale, and the Salhaan chiefs, who so rarely indulge in the taste of flesh, being stirred by the thought of roast fowl and hot tea, of which latter luxury they are passionately fond, will now offer to come over on any terms. And so it

proves. In a few minutes, Mohammed comes to the tent-door with a message from the Salhaan, saying that the three sheikhs will pay their English brother a morning visit, if they may bring over their mares and carbines. To this there is no objection.

The first sheikh, not Goblan, but a nephew, is a handsome young Arab, spare and lithe, about thirty years old, with black eyes, thin hair, and a very swarthy cheek. One man of his kin is fair; his cheek being ruddy, his eye almost blue. Among the Bedaween this young fellow is thought beautiful. Dressed in Frank costume he might be taken for a Saxon, perhaps for a Dane. Asking about his country and his people, we find that however fair, he is a true child of Esau, a dweller in the Moab mountains, a countryman of Ruth.

The men first break bread with us standing; when we have all eaten a piece, they sit down on their heels. After devouring the fragments of our meal, emptying everything except the flask of wine, they beg a little tobacco, and smoke, at our expense, the hospitable pipe.

When he has calmed his nerves by a few whiffs in silence, the sheikh observes that inasmuch as we have now broken bread, and become brothers of the Salhaan, there can be no longer the same objection on our side of the tent to giving him a tabanja.

Our very

We have two tabanjas, they have none. servant (he means our master, Yakoub) has a tabanja. In Frangistan, he has heard it said, tabanjas may be bought in every bazaar. Can we not spare one for a brother? Deaf to all persuasion, we give them of our fruit, our bread, and our tobacco; none of our ammunition and our arms. The fair Arab then craves, as a final favour, that I will let him look at the tabanja; let him hold it in his hand. For love of his countrywomen Rachel and Ruth, I would gladly let him have his will; but we are sitting on the bank of a rapid stream, and I fear lest his virtue may be as frail as that of Rachel when she stole away the teraphim from her father's house. Seeing me firm on this point, the young man begs me to fire it off; but I tell him, with a grave smile, that whenever it is fired it kills a man, and since they have eaten bread and become our brothers, it would be murder to shed their blood.

The shot goes home. After that, they begin to beg for trifles; nothing in our tent, from a lucifer match to a dose of quinine, being too foreign for their greed. There is a touch of humour, as it seems to me, in giving a piastre apiece to three swarthy fellows who have only just been debating among themselves whether they should attempt to rifle your saddle-bags and cut your throats.

So the Salhaan and the Saxon the rover of the desert and the rover of the sea sit down together under the canes, eating the Bethlehem grapes and sucking the Lebanon leaf, near the spot on which Joshua had encamped with the forty thousand

fighting men, before marching up to Gilgal, and close to the bar on which John had baptized the multitudes who flocked to him from Judea and Galilee.

In dress, in manner, and in aspect, John, the cousin of our Lord, must have had something in common with this young Arab sheikh. A man of the same race and lineage, he also wore a shirt of camels' hair, gathered in at the waist by a leathern belt; he had the swarthy hue which comes from a Syrian sun; he dwelt in the desert; he fed on coarse food, on locusts and herbs, and wild honey; and he drank no wine or other fermented juice.

CHAPTER XXIX.

Jesus at Bethabara.

AFTER Joseph's death, the date of which is unknown, it seems clear that JESUS continued to labour in his father's trade; going about the country with his' axe, his chisel, his measuring line and rule; seeking such work as a Jew could find; and doing it with all his might. A carpenter's tasks were of many kinds: making benches for the synagogues, shaping poles and beams for tents, trimming masts, repairing boats, cutting lintels for doorways, mending roofs, making stools and shelves for domestic use. In labours like these JESUS was engaged until he had completed his thirtieth year.

It need not be thought that because he tramped about Galilee, mending benches in the synagogues and boats on the lake, that his occupations were considered mean. They were in fact holy. Every Jew, from the peasant in his hut to the high priest in his palace, learned some craft. If JESUS was a carpenter, St. Paul was a tent-maker, Rabbi Ishmael was a needle-maker, Rabbi Simon a weaver, Rabbi Jochanan a shoemaker. All labour of the hands was held in honour. One of the most despised of all employments among the Jews was that of tending sheep and goats the office of a woman or of a slave; yet David had been taken from the hill-side