Daisy in the Field Part 42

"Yes," said Mr. Dinwiddie. "On this face of the mountain there are thirty or forty caves - I think there are many more in the gorge of the Kelt, round on the south face. Do you see that round hole over your head?"

We were standing in one of the caverns. I looked up.

"I cannot get you up there," he went on, - "but I have climbed up by means of a rope. There are other rooms there, and one is a chapel - I mean, it was one, - with arches cut to the windows and doorways, and frescoed walls, full of figures of saints. Through another hole in another ceiling, like this, I got up into still a third set of rooms, like the ones below.

Into those n.o.body had come for many a year; the dust witnessed it. Back of one room, the chapel, was a little low doorway; very low. I crept through - and there in the inner place, lay piled the skeletons of the old hermits; skulls and bones, just as they had been laid while the flesh was still upon them; the dust was inches deep. A hundred feet higher up there are more caverns. No, I should not like to take you - though the Abyssinian devotees come to them every spring. Yet higher than those, far up, near the top of the mountain, I have explored others, where I found still more burial caves like the one just here above us. Chapels and frescoes were up there too."

"And difficult climbing, Mr. Dinwiddie."

"Very difficult. Broken stairs and dizzy galleries, and deep precipices, with the vultures floating in air down below me."

"What a place for men to live!"

"Fitter for the doves and swallows which inhabit the old hermits' houses now. Yet not a bad place to live either, if one had nothing to do in the world. Sit down and rest and let us look at it."

"And I have got some luncheon for you, Mr. Dinwiddie. I should have missed all this if you had not been with me. Papa would never have come here."

There were many places in front of the cells where seats had been cut out in the rock; and in one of these Mr. Dinwiddie and I sat down, to eat fruit and biscuit and use our eyes; our attendant Arab no doubt wondering at us all the while. The landscape in view was exceedingly fine. We had the plains of Jericho, green and lovely, spread out before us; we could see the north end of the Dead Sea and the mouth of the Jordan; and the hills of Moab, always like a superb wall of mountain rising up over against us.

"Do you know where you are?" said Mr. Dinwiddie.

"Partly."

"The site of old Jericho is marked by the heaps and the ruins which lie between us and our camp."

"Yes. That is _old_ Jericho."

"Over against us, somewhere among those Moab hills, is the pa.s.s by which the hosts of the 'sons of Israel' came down, with their flocks and herds, to the rich plains over there, - the plains of Moab."

"And opposite us, I suppose, somewhere along there in front of old Jericho, is the place where the waters of the river failed from below and were cut off from above, and the great s.p.a.ce was laid bare for the armies to pa.s.s over."

"Just over there. And there - Elijah and Elisha went over dry shod, when Elijah smote with his mantle upon the waters; and there by the same way Elisha came back alone, after he had seen his master taken from him."

"Those were grand times!" I said, with a half breath.

"They were rough times."

"Still, they were grand times."

"I think, these are grander."

"But, Mr. Dinwiddie, such things are not done now as were done then."

"Why not?"

"Why, how can you ask?"

"How can you answer?"

"Why, Mr. Dinwiddie, the river is not parted now, this river nor any other, for the Lord's people to go over without trouble."

"Are you sure?" said he, with the deep sweet look I had noticed. "Do they never come now, in the way of their duty, to an impa.s.sable barrier of danger or difficulty, through which the same hand opens their path? Did you never find that they do, in your own experience?"

A little, I had; and yet it seemed to me that a very Jordan of difficulty lay before me now, rolling in full power. Mr.

Dinwiddie waited a moment and went on.

"That old cry, 'Where is the Lord G.o.d of Elijah?' - will bring down His hand, now as then; mighty to hold back worse waves than those of the 'Descender.' Aaron's rod, and the blast of the priests' trumpets, were but the appeal and the triumph of faith. And before that appeal stronger walls than those of Jericho fall down, now as well as then."

"Then it must be the faith that is wanting," I said.

"Sometimes" - Mr. Dinwiddie answered; "and _not_ sometimes. That earnest Sunday-school teacher, who prayed that the Lord would give him at least one soul a week out of his Bible cla.s.s, and who reported at the end of the year, _fifty-two_ brought to G.o.d, - what do you think of his faith? - and his Jericho?"

"Is it true?" I said.

"It is true. What are the walls of stone and mortar to that?

We wrestle not with flesh and blood, but against princ.i.p.alities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world. - But our Captain is stronger."

I think we were both silent for some time; yet there was a din of voices in my ear. So it seemed. Silence was literally broken only by the note of a bird here and there; but the plain before me, the green line which marked the course of the Jordan, the Moab mountains, the ruins at my feet, the caves behind me, were all talking to me. And there were voices of my own past and present, still other voices, blending with these.

I sat very still, and Mr. Dinwiddie sat very still; until he suddenly turned to me and spoke.

"Will nothing but a miracle do, Miss Daisy?"

The tone was so gentle and so quietly blended itself with my musings, that I started and smiled.

"Oh, yes," I said; - "I do not suppose I want a miracle."

"Can a friend's counsel be of any use?"

"It might - of the greatest," I answered; - "if only I could tell you all the circ.u.mstances."

"Before we go to that, how has it fared with my little friend of old time, all these years?"

"How has it _fared_ with me?" - I repeated in doubt.

"There is only one sort of welfare I know," he said. "It is not strength to the body, or gold to the purse. I am 'well'

only when G.o.d's favour is shining on me and I am strong to run the way of His commandments."

"I am not strong," I said.

"You know I do not mean my own strength, or yours," he answered.

"I have never forgotten what you used to tell me," I said.

"Good. And yet, Miss Daisy, I would rather you could tell me you had forgotten it; that you had gone on so far from that beginning as to have lost it out of view."

"Ah, but I have not had so many friends to teach me, and help me, that I could afford to forget the first one," I said. "I have one dear old friend who thinks as you do, - and that is all; and I cannot see her now."

" 'If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of G.o.d, who giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him,' " Mr. Dinwiddie said.