There, by Mark's arrangement, fresh syces had been posted from the stables for the return ride. They squatted on the sunny steps, their lips red with chewing betel-nut. They jumped up with salaams to take over charge of the hot steeds and to rub them down, while Mark, with liberal _backsheesh_, dispatched the returning pair of runners for, doubtless, a very leisurely progress townwards. Hester had already scaled some of the steps of the shining stair when Mark joined her. "Here we are, Hester, another pair of pilgrims treading the steps that have been climbed for centuries by feet often weary enough, no doubt, not to speak of hearts that ached!" "Yes, it feels good to picture it--gives one a feeling of brotherhood, doesn't it? I wonder if the pilgrims ever crawled on their knees up those many steps as they do on the _Santa Scala_ in Rome," said Hester, recalling the sight she had seen last Easter when she went for her first visit to Italy with her father. As she lightly trod on, her thoughts lingered over Mark's suggestion, till she felt as if she too were one of the long procession of care-encumbered men and women who had come--some with true faith and zeal--to seek the true helper in the little chapel with its sacred symbols, which was once no doubt like an oasis in the desert of surrounding heathenism. Its dedication to the _Expectation of the Blessed Virgin_ could still be traced in rude, half-effaced letters over the doorway. The little building was very primitive both within and without. Underneath its rough stone pavement lay many dead. Presently the visitors came to the most interesting relic within the building--a grey stone slab finely carved, a scroll running round it on which there was a curious inscription, and in the centre a beautiful Persian cross with a dove brooding over it. "That slab must have proved a bigger effort for some old-time Christian than one of our finest monuments to the modern sculptor," said Mark, after a close inspection of the carving. "The man who carved it must have been a genius. Think of the rough tools he had, and the absence probably of all suggestion from without!" "Yes, isn't it rather symbolic too," answered Hester with a sigh. "Don't each of us have to carve our own crosses with rough tools till sometimes our fingers bleed, and our hearts too?" "Wouldn't it be a more comforting metaphor to say that the Master Sculptor does that for us--chip by chip--till the work stands out a thing of beauty like that old cross?" "But the process hurts, Mark! Shall we never be finished? Will our chipping go on to the very end?" said Hester, with a sudden ring of pain in her voice.