Midway across the valley was a little city, whose buildings clustered about a temple, each of whose enormous stones was clearly marked to the eye miles away, so immense were they. These stones had been consecrated by the blood of human sacrifices. This was Baal-bek, the city of Baal. Not far from it Marduk pointed out his tent, a white cone just distinguishable in the distance. On the mountain brow they took their morning meal, with which Elnathan's well-filled hamper supplied them. For an hour Zillah must rest. The cloaks of the men made her couch. It would be well for her to sleep; but the over-excitement of the day and night could not be allayed at the call of expediency. She could only promise to lie still if Hiram were by her. Manasseh and Elnathan assumed the duty of picket guards, and wandered back over the road they had come, to give warning in case of pursuit. Of this, however, they had little fear, at least for that day, as they had chosen a path which would hardly be thought of by others; the way of flight being naturally down the river Adonis, where one could be lost in the crowds and easily take to the sea; for the escape of such a person as Zillah would be thought of in connection with some wide preparation looking to future abode in a distant Phoenician colony, or perhaps in Greece or Egypt. Zillah's chief fear was not danger from men. The superstition of her religion still held a partial spell over her mind which no resolution could break at once. The habitual thoughts of a lifetime will linger and impress us in spite of our calling them unreasonable. Zillah felt that she had challenged Astarte. In her keen imagination, the indignant eyes of the goddess were turned upon her. They burned her. She could not rest. But there was a counter-spell in the kiss of her companion, which would have gone far to exorcise these demons of fear and religious anxiety, even had he never uttered his stout words of disbelief in the whole system of Baalism.