ave taken upon myself no less than they, but my lie will
surely be forgiven me, if it is not reckoned against them that they shed
blood."

These and such reflections restored Paulus to equanimity and to
satisfaction with his conduct, and he began to consider, whether he
should return to his old cave and the neighborhood of Stephanus, or seek
for a new abode. He decided on the latter course; but first he must find
fresh water and some sort of nourishment; for his mouth and tongue were
quite parched.

Lower down in the valley sprang a brooklet of which he knew, and hard
by it grew various herbs and roots, with which he had often allayed his
hunger. He followed the declivity to its base, then turning to the left,
he crossed a small table land, which was easily accessible from the
gorge, but which on the side of the oasis formed a perpendicular cliff
many fathoms deep. Between it and the main mass of the mountain rose
numerous single peaks, like a camp of granite tents, or a wildly tossing
sea suddenly turned to stone; behind these blocks ran the streamlet,
which he found after a short search.

Perfectly refreshed, and with renewed resolve to bear the worst with
patience, he returned to the plateau, and from the edge of the precipice
he gazed down into the desert gorge that stretched away far below
his feet, and in whose deepest and remotest hollow the palmgroves and
tamarisk-thickets of the oasis showed as a sharply defined mass of
green, like a luxuriant wreath flung upon a bier. The whitewashed roofs
of the little town of Pharan shone brightly among the branches and
clumps of verdure, and above them all rose the new church, which he was
now forbidden to enter. For a moment the thought was keenly painful that
he was excluded from the devotions of the community, from the Lord's
supper and from congregational prayer, but then he asked, was not every
block of stone on the mountain an altar--was not the blue sky above a
thousand times wider, and more splendid than the mightiest dome raised
by the hand of man, not even excepting the vaulted roof of the Serapeum
at Alexandria, and he remembered the "Amen" of the stones, that had
rung out after the preaching of the blind man. By this time he had quite
recovered himself, and he went towards the cliff in order to find
a cavern that he knew of, and that was empty--for its gray-headed
inhabitant had died some weeks since. "Verily," thought he, "it seems to
me that I am by no mean