If Hassan had not misled him wilfully, and they had not overshot the proper distance, to judge by the position of the sun, he supposed that Dayr-el-Syrian, where the Amir-Ali's command was encamped, should be somewhere on his right; but, if so, ere this he should have come to the sequestered Macarius Convent--so called from St. Macarius the Elder, of Egypt, a shepherd of the fourth century, who (so runs the story) dwelt for sixty years in the desert; but of that edifice he saw no sign or vestige, and he saw, by the same map, that if he had _passed_ it and gone through the extreme end of the Wady Faregh, then before him must lie the 'Petrified Forest,' of which he knew nothing, and of which he had never heard before, lying apparently more than a hundred miles westward of Cairo--a distance which it seemed almost incredible he had so nearly travelled, and the very name of which was suggestive of something of horror and dismay. Again and again, with hollow and haggard eyes, he swept the desert through his field-glass, seeking to note a bush or tree that might indicate where a fountain lay; but in vain, and the pangs of thirst increased till they became gnawing and maddening. He would certainly die soon! More than once he looked, too, in the desperate hope of seeing Abdullah returning; but equally in vain. As he rode on under the scorching sun--scorching even while setting--with his head nodding on his breast through weakness, there came before him day-dreams of runnels of gushing water--their very sound seemed to be in his ears--of 'a wee burnie wimpling under the lang yellow broom,' in the shady woods of Dunnimarle, and the rustle of their leaves seemed overhead! The poor old mother there, to whom he was as the apple of her eye--Hester too--would never know of all he endured and would have to endure inexorably till the bitter end came; and just then, more than even his mother, dove-eyed Hester Maule seemed all the world to him! Well--'Time and the hour run through the roughest day.' With that appreciation of trifles peculiar to us all in moments of dire perplexity or intense excitement, he was remarking the vast length of shadow thrown across the level waste, by the light of the now nearly level sun--the shadow of himself and his camel--when a sudden acceleration in the speed of the latter attracted his attention; it began to glide over the desert sand more swiftly than ever, guided by some instinct implanted in it by nature, and in a few minutes it brought him to a little spot of green--an oasis--amid which, fenced round by stones and large pebbles, lay a pool of water!