While she spoke and Miriam clung to her affrighted, Ithiel struck iron and flint together.  Catching the spark upon tinder he blew it to a flame and lighted a taper which burnt up slowly, causing his white beard and face to appear by degrees out of the darkness, like that of a ghost rising from the tomb.

“Oh! surely I am dead,” said Miriam, “for before me stands the spirit of my uncle Ithiel.”

“Not the spirit, Miriam, but the flesh,” answered the old man in a voice that trembled with joy.  Then, since he could restrain himself no longer, he gave the taper to the brother, and, taking her in his arms, kissed her again and again.

“Welcome, most dear child,” he said; “yes, even to this darksome den, welcome, thrice welcome, and blessed be the eternal God Who led our feet forth to find you.  Nay, do not stop to talk, we are still too near the wall.  Give me your hand and come.”

Miriam glanced up as she obeyed, and by the feeble light of the taper saw a vast rocky roof arching above them.  On either side of her also were walls of rough-hewn rock down which dripped water, and piled upon the floor or still hanging half-cut from the roof, boulders large enough to fashion a temple column.

“What awful place is this, my uncle?” she asked.

“The cavern whence Solomon, the great king, drew stone for the building of the Temple.  Look, here are his mason’s marks upon the wall.  Here he fashioned the blocks and thus it happened that no sound of saw or hammer was heard within the building.  Doubtless also other kings before and since his day have used this quarry, as no man knows its age.”

While he spoke thus he was leading her onwards over the rough, stone-hewn floor, where the damp gathered in little pools.  Following the windings of the cave they turned once, then again and yet again, so that soon Miriam was utterly bewildered and could not have found her way back to the entrance for her life’s sake.  Moreover, the air had become so hot and stifling that she could scarcely breathe.

“It will be better presently,” said Ithiel, noticing her distress, as he drew her limping after him into what seemed to be a natural crevice of rock hardly large enough to allow the passage of his body.  Along this crevice they scrambled for eight or ten paces, to find themselves suddenly in a tunnel lined with masonry, and so large that they could stand upright.

“Once it was a watercourse,” explained Ithiel, “that filled the great tank, but now it has been dry for centuries.”

Down this darksome shaft hobbled Miriam, till presently it ended in a wall, or what seemed to be a wall—­for when Ithiel pressed upon a stone it turned.  Beyond it the tunnel continued for twenty or thirty paces, leading them at length into a vast chamber with arched roof and cemented sides and bottom, which in some bygone age had been a water-tank.  Here lights were burning, and even a charcoal fire, at which a brother was engaged in cooking.  Also the air was pure and sweet, doubtless because of the winding water-channels that ran upwards.  Nor did the place lack inhabitants, for there, seated in groups round the tapers, or watching the cooking over the charcoal fire, were forty or fifty men, still clad, for the most part, in the robes of the Essenes.