The dread of divine displeasure rendered the service of the Temple one of fear and trembling.[268] In the darkness, before dawn, the “man of the mountain of the house” went his rounds to visit the priests and Levites who guarded the sanctuary by night. At cock-crow the huge altar was first cleansed, by the priest to whom the lot fell. From the Gate-house Moḳed he went in the dim light of the three great fires of fig-tree wood, nut, and pine, which glowed under the ashes. His brethren listened to hear the creaking of the wheel of the draw-well, as he sanctified his hands and feet. Then they came running to aid him, taking away the unburnt fragments of sacrifices, heaping up the ashes, and feeding the undying flame. As the red light spread behind the dark mountains of Moab, southwards “towards Hebron,” they brought out and slew the lamb of the “perpetual” sacrifice each morning, and prepared the incense and the shew-bread. [Sidenote: TEMPLE SERVICES] On the dread Day of Atonement[269] the high-priest was supported to the Holy House by two priests, while a third laid hold of one of the jewels on his shoulder. The sound of the golden bells was heard as he went alone within the inner veil, but priests and people waited in awe-stricken silence, till he came out to bless them by the very name of Iahu, and to send forth the goat bearing the sins of the nation to the grim precipice of Ṣûḳ--a mountain visible from Olivet--which rises over the Desert of Judah. Yet more rarely--perhaps only seven times in the period between Ezra and Herod--he left the Temple by the Shushan Gate, and passing over a high wooden causeway, ascended Olivet to burn the red heifer. Its ashes were mingled with water from Siloam, brought to the Temple, it is said, by innocent boys mounted on oxen, with much fear lest these should tread on some “grave of the depth,” or hidden tomb, and so defile the children who rode them, and who had been born in the outer court of the sanctuary. Without these ashes there was no purification for Israel from defilement by the dead. They were stored partly on Olivet and partly in the Temple.