Having no water with which to wash the bleeding hurt, she made a
poultice of crushed herbs and tied it about the ankle with a strip of
linen. Even before she had finished her task, so exhausted was Miriam
that she fell fast asleep. Nehushta watched her a while, wondering
what they should do next, till, in that lonely place bathed by the warm
spring sun, she also began to doze.
Suddenly she awoke with a start, having dreamed that she saw a man with
white face and beard peering at them from behind a rough angle of rock.
She stared: there was the rock as she had dreamed of it, but no man.
She looked upward. Above them, piled block upon gigantic block, rose the
wall, towering and impregnable. Thither he could not have gone, since
on it only a lizard could find foothold. Nor was he anywhere else, for
there was no cover; so she decided that he must have been some searcher
of the rubbish-heap, who, seeing them hidden in the tall grasses, had
fled away. Miriam was still sound asleep, and in her weariness presently
Nehushta again began to doze, till at length--it may have been one hour
later, or two or three, she knew not--some sound disturbed her.
Opening her eyes, once more behind that ridge of rock she saw, not one
white-bearded face, but two, staring at her and Miriam.
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