at the peak of rock,
but it stood there bare and silent. Already it seemed to him that that
strange dark figure which had startled him so was some dream, some
vision of the twilight. His gourd lay where it had fallen, and he picked
it up with the intention of going to the spring. But suddenly he was
aware of something new. The whole air was throbbing with sound. From all
sides it came, rumbling, indefinite, an inarticulate mutter, low, but
thick and strong, rising, falling, reverberating among the rocks, dying
away into vague whispers, but always there. He looked round at the blue,
cloudless sky in bewilderment. Then he scrambled up the rocky pinnacle
above him, and sheltering himself in its shadow, he stared out over the
plain. In his wildest dream he had never imagined such a sight.

The whole vast expanse was covered with horsemen, hundreds and thousands
and tens of thousands, all riding slowly and in silence, out of the
unknown east. It was the multitudinous beat of their horses' hoofs
which caused that low throbbing in his ears. Some were so close to him
as he looked down upon them that he could see clearly their thin, wiry
horses, and the strange humped figures of their swarthy riders, sitting
forward on the withers, shapeless bundles, their short legs hanging
stirrupless, their bodies balanced as firmly as though they were part of
the beast. In those nearest he could see the bow and the quiver, the
long spear and the short sword, with the coiled lasso behind the rider,
which told that this was no helpless horde of wanderers, but a
formidable army upon the march. His eyes passed on from them and swept
further and further, but still to the very horizon, which quivered with
movement, there was no end to this monstrous cavalry. Already the
vanguard was far past the island of rock upon which he dwelt, and he
could now understand that in front of this vanguard were single scouts
who guided the course of the army, and that it was one of these whom he
had seen the evening before.

All day, held spell-bound by this wonderful sight, the hermit crouched
in the shadow of the rocks, and all day the sea of horsemen rolled
onward over the plain beneath. Simon had seen the swarming quays of
Alexandria, he had watched the mob which blocked the hippodrome of
Constantinople, yet never had he imagined such a multitude as now
defiled beneath his eyes, coming from that eastern skyline which had
been the end of his world. Sometimes t