I hope to visit them some day, for I was brought up in the country, and, although I am a soldier, still understand a farm.

As for the Dead Sea, it is even more dreary than I expected.

Tell me, lady, what is that large building yonder ?" "That," she answered, "is the gathering hall of the Essenes." "And that ?" he asked, pointing to a house which stood by itself.
"That is my home, where Nehushta and I dwell." "I guessed as much by the pretty garden." Then he asked her other questions, which she answered freely enough, for Miriam, although she was half Jewish, had been brought up among men, and felt neither fear nor shame in talking with them in a friendly and open fashion, as an Egyptian or a Roman or a Grecian lady might have done.
While they were still conversing thus, of a sudden the bushes on their path were pushed aside, and from between them emerged Caleb, of whom she had seen but little of late.

He halted and looked at them.
"Friend Caleb," said Miriam, "this is the Roman captain Marcus, who comes to visit the curators of the Order.

Will you lead him and his soldiers to the council hall and advise my uncle Ithiel and the others of his coming, since it is time for us to go home ?" Caleb glared at her, or rather at the stranger, with sullen fury; then he answered: "Romans always make their own road; they do not need a Jew to guide them," and once more he vanished into the scrub on the further side of the path.
"Your friend is not civil," said Marcus, as he watched him go.