Between was a cruel waste, tufted here and there by gray-green, scrubby growth, half-buried in sand and rooted in gravel. There was color, but it was the dye of chemicals, not refractions; chalks, not rainbows. The drop of water has only the true range of the spectrum and its merging grades, but sands may be erratic, chaotic. Thus, the wadies, sallow meanderings in the trembling distance, were bordered with dull fawn and dull lavender--ashes of scarlet and purple; wherever hummocks arose there were ground-swells of lifeless gray and saffron--burned-out blue and gold. Over it all were sown burnished fleckings of myriads of mica particles, like white-hot motes from the face of the sun itself. The air was flame; the sky a livid arch that no man dared look upon. At high noon, Marsyas hid from the deadly sun in a crevice in a narrow canyon; but pressed on while yet the scorching air burned his nostrils. At night, he rode through bitter winds, or broke his fast with the inky outlines of jackals squatting about the rim of the immediate landscape. He met no man, and had no desire for companionship with the burden of his stern thoughts to attend him. He did not have the murderer's heart in him; he did not go forward in a whirl of passion and fury; it did not once occur to him to ambush the Tarsian; he did not ponder on a plan of action when the moment should arrive; not once did he strike the fatal blow, in his imagination, nor speak with Saul, nor follow himself after the deed was done. His ideas were largely in retrospect, or centered upon the necessity of his work. His love of Lydia, his love of life, his natural impulses toward generous things were put away from him with firmness, as things which had no place at such a time. His composure was almost resignation. He knew then, that which he had never been able to understand,--how men of great souls and previous noble lives could in all calmness kill another by design. A glittering white ridge had shaped itself out of the pale blue sky of an early morning, while yet he rode in the hills. It was Hermon, with the unmelted snows of the winter covering its crown. Opposite it, he came upon another miserable cluster of hovels, the abode of pestilence, want and superstition, and there found that Saul had passed through the village at high noon that day. Marsyas purchased water for his horse and rode on. Saul was now only a half-day's journey ahead of him.