strength;' and 'he giveth power to thefaint.' "
"But there is no perfection, Mr. Dinwiddie."
"Not if by perfection you mean, standing alone. But if thepower that holds us up is perfect, - what should hinder ourhaving a fulness of that? 'If ye shall ask anything in Myname, I will do it.' Isn't that promise good for all we wantto ask?"
I sat down again to think. Mr. Dinwiddie quietly took hisplace by my side; and we were still for a good while. Theplains of Jericho and the Jordan and the Moab mountains andthe Quarantania, all seemed to have new voices for me now;voices full of balm; messages of soft-healing. I do think themessages God sends to us by natural things are some of thesweetest and mightiest and best understood of all. They comehome.
"Do you think," I asked, after a long silence, "that thismountain was really the scene of the Temptation?"
"Why should we think so? No, I do not think it."
"But the road from Jericho to Jerusalem - there is no doubt ofthat?"
"No doubt at all. We are often sure of the roads here, when weare sure of little else."
There was a pause; and then Mr. Dinwiddie broke it.
"You left things in confusion at home. How do you feel aboutthat?"
"At home in America?" I said. "I do not feel about it as myparents do."
"You side with the North!"
"I have lived there so much. I know the view taken there; andit seems to me the right one. And I have lived at the Southtoo; and I do not like the view held there, - nor the practicefollowed."
"There are some things I can fancy you would not like," hesaid musingly. "I have not known what to think. It seems to methey have made a false move. But it seems to me they mustsucceed."
"I don't know," I said. "Perhaps."
He looked at me a little hard, and then we left the hermits'caves and went down the plain to our encampment.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE FORLORN HOPE
The spot where our tents were pitched commands a view, I thinkone of the loveliest in the world. Perhaps with me associationhas something to do with the feeling. That broad sweep of theplains of Jericho, bright with their groves of Zizyphus trees;the lake waters coming in at the south; the great line of theMoab horizon, and the heights of the western shore; and thenthe constant changes which the light makes in revealing allthese; I found it a study of beauty, from the morning till thenight. From the time when the sun rose over the Moab mountainsand brightened our d?m trees and kissed our spring, to theevening when the shadow of Quarantania stretched over all ourneighbourhood, as it stretched over Jericho of old, and thedistant hills and waters and thickets glowed in colours andlights of their own.
The next morning after my walk I was up early, and going alittle way from my tent door, I sat down to enjoy it. Theservants were but just stirring; my father and Mr. Dinwiddiesafe within their canvas curtains. It was very nice to bealone, for I wanted to think. The air was deliciously balmyand soft; another fair day had risen upon us in that region oftropical summer; the breath of the air was peace. Or was itthe speech of the past? It is difficult to disentangle thingssometimes. I had troublesome matters to think about, yetsomehow I was not troubled. I did not lay hold of trouble, allthe while I was in Palestine. Mr. Dinwiddie's words hadrevealed to me that it might be my duty to tell my father allthat was in my heart. Suspicions of the fact, only, hadcrossed my thought before; but "as iron sharpeneth iron, so aman sharpeneth the countenance of his friend." I saw moreclearly. And the longer I sat there on my stone looking overto the line of the Jordan and to the hills through which thearmies of Israel had once come down to cross it, the clearerit grew to my mind, that the difficulty before me was one tobe faced, not evaded. I saw that papa had a right to know myaffairs, and that he would think it became me as a Christiannot to make a mystery of them. I saw I must tell papa aboutmyself. And yet, it did not appal me, as the idea had oftenappalled me. I was hardly afraid. At any rate, there before methe hosts of the Israelites had passed over dry shod; thoughthe river was swift and strong; and the appeal of Elisha, -"Where is the Lord God of Elijah?" - came home to my ear likea blast of the priests' silver trumpets. I felt two hands onmy shoulders.
"Studying it all, Daisy?"
"Papa, I am never tired of studying."
"This is a wonderful place."
"Papa, you know little about it yet. Old Jericho was upthere."
"You speak as if I had gone to school in 'old Jericho,' " saidmy father, laughing. "I have the vaguest idea, Daisy, thatsuch a city existed. That is all."
"Sit down, papa, while breakfast is getting ready, and let memend your knowledge."
So we read the story there, on the stone by the spring. Mr.Dinwiddie joined us; and it was presently decided that weshould spend the morning in examining the ground in ourneighbourhood and the old sites of what had passed away. Soafter breakfast we sat out upon a walk over the territory ofold Jericho.
"But it is strange," said papa, "if the city was here, thatthere are no architectural remains to testify as much."
"We rarely find them, sir, but in connection with Roman orSaracenic work. Shapeless mounds, and broken pottery, as youhave it here, are all that generally mark our Palestineruins."
"But Herod?" said papa. "He was a builder."
"Herod's Jericho was a mile and a half away, to the east. Andmoreover, if anything had been remaining here that could bemade of use, the Saracens or Crusaders would have pulled it topieces to help make their sugar mills up yonder, or theiraqueducts."
"There is no sugar cane here now?"
"Not a trace of it. Nor a palm tree; though Jericho was a cityof palms; nor a root of the balsam, though great gain wasderived to Judea in ancient times from the balsam gardenshere."
We mounted our horses and rode down to the site of Herod'sJericho, on the banks of the little stream that issues fromthe gorge of the Wady Kelt. How lovely, and how desolate, itwas. The stream overhung with trees and bordered witholeanders and shrubs of which I have forgotten the names, andcrossed by old arches still; and around, the desolate tokensof what once was. Foundation lines, and ruined aqueducts. Mr.Dinwiddie made us remark the pavement of the road leading upto the Kelt, the old road to Jerusalem, the road by whichJesus went when the blind men called him, and over which,somewhere on its way, stretched the sycamore tree into whichZaccheus climbed. Ah how barren and empty the way looked now!- with Him no longer here. For a moment, so looked my own pathbefore me, - the dusty, hot road; the desolate pass; thebarren mountain top. It was only a freak of fancy; I do notknow what brought it. I had not felt so a moment before, and Idid not a moment after.
"Where His feet lead now, the green pastures are not wanting,-" Mr. Dinwiddie said; I suppose reading my look.
"Never, Mr. Dinwiddie?"
"Never!"
"But it _seems_, often, to people, that they are wanting."
"Their eyes are so blinded by tears that they cannot see them,sometimes. Even then, they can lie down and feel them, - feelthat they are in them."
"Are there any sycamore trees here now?" my father asked.
"Two or three poor old specimens; just enough to show for thestory. Those sycamore figs belong to the low and warmsituations; this is the proper place for them."
Papa felt so well that we determined to push on to the Jordan.It was a hot, long ride, over a shadeless and barren plain;and when we came to the river papa declared himself very muchdisappointed. But I was not. Narrow and muddy as the streamwas, it was also powerful in its rapid flood; no one couldventure to bathe in it. The river was much swollen and hadbeen yet more so; the tracks of wild animals which the floodshad disturbed were everywhere to be seen. Papa and Mr.Dinwiddie reasoned and argued, while I sat and meditated; in adeep delight that I should see the Jordan at all. We took along rest there, on its banks. The jungle was a deliciousstudy to me, and when the deep talk of the gentlemen subsidedenough to give me a chance, I got Mr. Dinwiddie to enlightenme as to the names and qualities of the various trees andplants. They were of fine l
uxuriant growth. Poplars andsycamores and other trees, willows, I think, and exquisitetamarisks in blossom; and what I specially admired, the canes.I understood then how people might go into the plain to see "areed shaken with the wind." Growing twelve to fifteen feethigh, with graceful tufts of feathery bloom which they bow andsway to the breeze in a manner lovely to see.
Another day we rode down to the shore of the Dead Sea; papabeing none the worse for his Jordan excursion. Then the rainvisited us, and for two or three days we were kept in ourtents. With some difficulty I then persuaded papa to gofurther south, to the shore of the Dead Sea, to some pleasantcamping ground by one of its western springs; there rain fallsalmost never. So,