“From the cliffs ’neath which the lily blooms,” he muses as he issues out of the forest and reaches the top of the mountain, “to the cliffs round which the eagles flit—what a glorious promontory! What a contrast at this height, in this immensity, between the arid rocky haunts of the mountain bear and eagle and the spreading, vivifying verdure surrounding the haunts of man. On one side are the sylvan valleys, the thick grown ravines, the meandering rivulets, the fertile plains, the silent villages, and on the distant horizon, the sea, rising like a blue wall, standing like a stage scene; on the other, a howling immensity of boulders and prickly shrubs and plants, an arid wilderness—the haunt of the eagle, the mountain bear, and the goatherd. One step in this direction, and the entire panorama of verdant hills and valleys is lost to view. Its spreading, riant beauty is hidden behind that little cliff. I penetrate through this forest of rocks, where the brigands, I am told, lie in ambush for the caravans traveling between the valley of the Leontes and the villages of the lowland. But the brigands can not harm a dervish; my penury is my amulet—my salvation.
“The horizon, as I proceed, shrinks to a distance of ten minutes’ walk across. And thus, from one circle of rocks to another, I pass through ten of them before I hear again the friendly voice of the rill, and behold again the comforting countenance of the sylvan slopes. I reach a little grove of slender poplars, under the brow of a little hill, from which issues a little limpid stream and runs gurgling through the little ferns and bushes down the heath. I swing from the road and follow this gentle rill; I can not find a better companion now. But the wanton lures me to a village far from the road on the other side of the gorge. Now, I must either retrace my steps to get to it by a long detour, or cross the gorge, descending to the deep bottom and ascending in a tangled and tortuous path to reach the main road on the breast of the opposite escarpment. Here is a shortcut which is long and weary. It lures me as the stream; it cheats me with a name. And when I am again on the open road, I look back with a sigh of relief on the dangers I had passed. I can forgive the luring rill, which still smiles to me innocently from afar, but not the deluding, ensnaring ravine. The muleteer who saw me struggling through the tangled bushes up the pathless, hopeless steep, assures me that my mother is a pious woman, else I would have slipped and gone into an hundred pieces among the rocks below. ‘Her prayers have saved thee,’ quoth he; ‘thank thy God.’
“And walking together a pace, he points to the dizzy precipice around which I climbed and adds: ‘Thou seest that rock? I hallooed to thee when thou wert creeping around it, but thou didst not hear me. From that same rock a woodman fell last week, and, falling, looked like a potted bird. He must have died before he reached the ground. His bones are scattered among those rocks. Thank thy God and thy mother. Her prayers have saved thee.’
“My dear mother, how long since I saw thee, how long since I thought of thee. My loving mother, even the rough, rude spirit of a muleteer can see in the unseen the beauty and benevolence of such devotion as thine. The words of this dusky son of the road, coming as through the trumpet of revelation to rebuke me, sink deep in my heart and draw tears from mine eyes. For art thou not ever praying for thy grievous son, and for his salvation? How many beads each night dost thou tell, how many hours dost thou prostrate thyself before the Virgin, sobbing, obsecrating, beating thy breast? And all for one, who until now, ever since he left Baalbek, did not think on thee.—Let me kiss thee, O my Brother, for thy mild rebuke. Let me kiss thee for reminding me of my mother.—No, I can not further with thee; I am waygone; I must sit me a spell beneath this pine—and weep. O Khalid, wretched that thou art, can the primitive soul of this muleteer be better than thine? Can there be a sounder intuitiveness, a healthier sense of love, a grander sympathy, beneath that striped aba, than there is within thy cloak? Wilt thou not beat thy cheeks in ignominy and shame, when a stranger thinks of thy mother, and reverently, ere thou dost? No matter how low in the spiritual circles she might be, no matter how high thou risest, her prayer and her love are always with thee. If she can not rise to thee on the ladder of reason, she can soar on the wings of affection. Yea, I prostrate myself beneath this pine, bury my forehead in its dust, thanking Allah for my mother. Oh, I am waygone, but joyous. The muleteer hath illumined thee, O Khalid.—
“There, the snow birds are passing by, flitting to the lowland. The sky is overcast; there is a lull in the wind. Hark, I hear the piping of the shepherd and the tinkling bell of the wether. Yonder is his flock; and there sits he on a rock blowing his doleful reed. I am almost slain with thirst. I go to him, and cheerfully does he milk for me. I
