When at last she broke the silence Spence noticed that something had gone out of her voice. The medicant whine, the ingratiating invitation had ceased. Her tones were impersonal, thinner, a _recitative_. "Ere sundown my lord will hear that a friend has died and his spirit is in the well of souls." "Tell me of this friend, O my aunt!" Spence said in colloquial Arabic. "Thy friend is a Frank, but more than a Frank, for he is one knowing much of this country, and has walked the stones of Jerusalem for many years. Thou wilt hear of his death from the lips of one who will tell thee of another thou seekest, and know not that it is he.... Give me back the stone, lord, and go thy way," she broke off suddenly, with seeming sincerity. "I will tell thee no more, for great business is in thy hands and thou art no ordinary wayfarer. Why didst thou hide it from me, Effendi?" Drawing her blue head-dress over her face, the woman refused to speak another word. Spence passed on, wondering. He knew, as all travellers who are not merely tourists know, that no one has ever been quite able to sift the fraud and trickery from the strange power possessed by those Eastern geomancers. It is an undecided question still, but only the shallow dare to say that _all_ is imposture.[2] And even the London journalist could not be purely materialistic in Jerusalem, the City of Sorrows. He went on towards his destination. Not far from the missionary establishment was a building which was the headquarters of the Palestine Exploring Society in Jerusalem. Cyril Hands had always lived up in Akra among the Europeans, but much of his time was necessarily spent in the Mûristan district. The building was known as the "Research Museum." Hands and his assistants had gathered a valuable collection of ancient curiosities. Here were hundreds of drawings and photographs of various excavations. Accurate measurements of tombs, buried houses, ancient churches were entered in great books. In glass cases were fragments of ancient pottery, old Hebrew seals, scarabs, antique fragments of jewellery--all the varied objects from which high scholarship and expert training was gradually, year by year, providing a luminous and entirely fresh commentary on Holy Writ. Here, in short, were the tools of what is known as the "Higher Criticism." Attached to the museum was a library and drawing office, a photographic dark room, apartments for the curator and his wife. A man who engaged the native labour required for the excavations superintended the work of the men and acted as general agent and intermediary between the European officials and all Easterns with whom they came in contact.