The HiUen Treasure
was marked by boulders, which must once have formed the
first layer in the buildings. Wan and poplar trees as well as
oak grew over and among them, giving their green fugitive
beauty to die sense of the passage of time. Here and there I
saw round holes, about eight inches in diameter, in flat stone
surfaces on the ground, and came to the conclusion that they
served possibly to hold the doorpost, as they still do in the
stone doorways of the Jebel Druse in Syria.
All round the northern side of the city, where it overhangs its
cliff, the walls are still plainly visible, and we followed them to
where the gate and gatehouse in the north-west lie open to a
stony track, that winds from under the cliff and the valley. Our
old man's grave was below, in a dry place, sheltered by the
precipice as by the side of a ship. It was marked by a stone at
head and feet, and had been opened once and carefully covered
overagain. The old man said the "Things "were inside it. He
worked with his pick, and then used his shirt and the bread-tray
to shovel out the earth. All he produced were bits of bones,
a shard of rough crockery, and a triangular stone cut like a
flint. His hopes, to tell the truth, were not in the objects
themselves but in what I might find in them—a belief which
I did nothing to strengthen, for I was disappointed.
As we sat there in the clouds of dust watching the work,
a noiseless figure suddenly appeared by the side of the grave.
It was a young man in an old green coat tight at the waist,
tied with a sash, and his dagger inside it. His brown naked
feet in cotton shoes made no sound. His light hair and
beard were almost the same colour as the little felt pointed cap
on his head, bleached and tawny like die woods and rocks.
He seemed the genius of the place and smiled in a friendly
way, looking down into the shaft of the grave, which
now showed narrow sides of dry built masonry made just
to contain the outstretched figure of a man. We bent
[H6]