ossoming orchards. Wherever the solid houses fronted in unbroken
rows the passages between, there were no open windows, no carpets
swung from latticed balconies; no buyers moved up the roofed-over
Street of Bazaars. Not in all the range of the old man's vision was to
be seen a living human being. For the chief city of the Philistine
country Ascalon was nerveless and still. At times immense and
ponderous creaking sounded in the distance, as if a great rusted crane
swung in the wind. Again there were distant, voluminous flutterings,
as if neglected and loosened sails flapped. Idle roaming donkeys
brayed and a dog shut up and forgotten in a compound barked
incessantly. Presently there came faint, far-off, failing cries that
faded into silence. The Jew's brow contracted but he did not move.

From his position, he could see the port to the east packed with
lifeless vessels. The stretches of stone wharf and the mole were
vacant and littered with rubbish. The yard-arms of abandoned
freighters were peculiarly beaded with tiny black shapes that moved
from time to time. Far out at sea, so far that a blue mist embraced
its base and set its sails mysteriously afloat in air, a great galley,
with all canvas crowded on, sped like a frightened bird past the port
that had once been its haven.

A strange compelling odor stole up from the city. Costobarus glanced
down into his garden below him. It was a terraced court, with
vine-covered earthen retaining walls supporting each successive tier
and terminating against a domed gate flanked on either side by a tall
conical cypress.

He noted, on the flagging of the walk leading by flights of steps down
to the gate, a heap of garments with broad brown and yellow stripes.
Wondering at the untidiness of his gardener in leaving his tunic here
while he worked, Costobarus looked away toward the large stones that
lay here and there in gutters and on grass-plots, remnants of the work
of the Roman catapults the previous summer. In the walls of houses
were unrepaired breaches, where the wounds of the missiles showed. On
a slight eminence overlooking the city from the west center-poles of
native cedar which had supported Roman tents were still standing. But
no garrison was there now, though the signs of the savage Roman
obsession still lay on the remnants of the prostrate western wall. So
as Costobarus' gaze wandered he did not see far above that heap of
striped garments in his garden walk, fixed like