The sun blazed upon it from six in the morning with an intolerable heat, and all night the wind blew across it piercingly cold, and played with the sand as it would, building pyramids house-high and levelling them, tunnelling valleys, silting up long slopes, so that the face of the country was continually changed.

The vultures and the sand-grouse held it undisturbed in a perpetual tenancy.

And to make the spot yet more desolate, there remained scattered here and there the bleached bones and skeletons of camels to bear evidence that about these wells once the caravans had crossed and halted; and the remnants of a house built of branches bent in hoops showed that once Arabs had herded their goats and made their habitation there.

Now the sun rose and set, and the hot sky pressed upon an empty round of honey-coloured earth.

Silence brooded there like night upon the waters; and the absolute stillness made it a place of mystery and expectation.
Yet in this month of May one man sojourned by the wells and sojourned secretly.