He had scarcely proceeded more than half an hour among the fig and olive trees which covered the slopes of the hills, and whose scorched and withered leaves marked the passage of the burning wind, when he arrived at the place he sought. It was a crazy, tumble-down hut, whose shapeless mass was so clumsily compounded of wood, stone, and mud, that a swallow would have been ashamed to own it, let alone a beaver, whose ordinary habitation is an architectural masterpiece compared with it. Nature, however, had been gracious to this shanty, and clothed it with creeping plants, which nearly hid away all the superfluous cracks and crevices which the architect had left behind him. It was here that the new-comer dismounted from his horse, tied it to a tree, and, proceeding to the latchless door, amused himself by reading the scrawl which had been written on the outside of it, and was, as usual, one of those sacred texts which the Turks love to see over their door-posts: "Accursed be he who disturbs a singing-bird!" The stranger fell a listening. Surely there was no singing-bird here, he thought. Then he went on reading what followed: "He who knocks at the gate of him who prays will knock in vain at the gate of Paradise." The stranger did not take the trouble to knock; he simply kicked the door down. Within was kneeling an anchorite of the order of Erdbuhár on a piece of matting. He was naked to the girdle, and before him stood a wooden tub full of fresh water. He was just finishing his ablutions.