me at some quiet curve and gone whizzing, car by car, around the corner and out of sight.  In that prolific instant I saw again all the country from the Sea of Galilee and Nazareth clear to Jerusalem, and thence over the hills of Judea and through the Vale of Sharon to Joppa, down by the ocean.  Leaving out unimportant stretches of country and details of incident, I saw and experienced the following described matters and things.  Immediately three years fell away from my age, and a vanished time was restored to me September, 1867.  It was a flaming Oriental day—­this one that had come up out of the past and brought along its actors, its stage-properties, and scenic effects—­and our party had just ridden through the squalid hive of human vermin which still holds the ancient Biblical name of Endor; I was bringing up the rear on my grave four-dollar steed, who was about beginning to compose himself for his usual noon nap.  My! only fifteen minutes before how the black, mangy, nine-tenths naked, ten-tenths filthy, ignorant, bigoted, besotted, hungry, lazy, malignant, screeching, crowding, struggling, wailing, begging, cursing, hateful spawn of the original Witch had swarmed out of the caves in the rocks and the holes and crevices in the earth, and blocked our horses’ way, besieged us, threw themselves in the animals’ path, clung to their manes, saddle-furniture, and tails, asking, beseeching, demanding “bucksheesh! bucksheesh!  BUCKSHEESH!” We had rained small copper Turkish coins among them, as fugitives fling coats and hats to pursuing wolves, and then had spurred our way through as they stopped to scramble for the largess.  I was fervently thankful when we had gotten well up on the desolate hillside and outstripped them and left them jawing and gesticulating in the rear.  What a tempest had seemingly gone roaring and crashing by me and left its dull thunders pulsing in my ears!

I was in the rear, as I was saying.  Our pack-mules and Arabs were far ahead, and Dan, Jack, Moult, Davis, Denny, Church, and Birch (these names will do as well as any to represent the boys) were following close after them.  As my horse nodded to rest, I heard a sort of panting behind me, and turned and saw that a tawny youth from the village had overtaken me —­a true remnant and representative of his ancestress the Witch—­a galvanised scurvy, wrought into the human shape and garnished with ophthalmia and leprous scars—­an airy creature with an invisible shirt-front that reached below the pit of his stomach, and no other clothing to speak of except a tobacco-pouch, an ammunition-pocket, and a venerable gun, which was long enough to club any game with that came within shooting distance, but far from efficient as an article of dress.