cypress saplings, along the length of the hedge, he would sow wheat and barley... Then he would pull up the dry brush, level the ground, break down the gullies, and gather the pebbles and stones into heaps stretching along the hedge, from the rocks of the rough ground, to the cypress saplings, down to the riverbank... And the season would yield him plenty this year, securing his vegetables, his wheat and his barley, besides what the cows would give of labneh and butter and ghee... And after a year... after two years, the saplings would grow and the fruit would ripen, and he would pick it and take it to the markets of the neighboring mountain... and sell... and profit... and he and his mother and his father would live in comfort... and the valley would grow sweet... and life would grow good... And how not, when here is his land, here his people and his kin, here his livelihood, his living, and his rest... And whatever may come, he will never cease to seek livelihood and living and rest, never forsake people and kin, never neglect the land; rather he will tend it with his care day after day and year after year, never selling, never thinking of selling, never dreaming of leaving... No, he will not do as their neighbor Abu al-Fahd did, who sold the Jews the field and the orchard and the vineyards of grape and fig and olive, then deserted the valley and went off to the mountain — so that when the people of the quarter came to blame him, and Abu Husni said to him reproachfully:

— What have you done, Abu al-Fahd?!... You wrong yourself and your family and us!... Could you not have waited and thought the matter over well?!

He answered them indignantly, mockery and scorn in his tone:

— I have left the waiting and the thinking to you, my counseling friends... Stay in this barren valley of yours... then plow as you please, and sow as you fancy... As for me, I shall sell... and rest easy... and

boast... and after me, the deluge...

It was as if these memories had come back to him, pressing upon him harshly, pressing upon him gently; as if these pale shadows floating on the slopes of the knoll, and these faint sounds spreading through the folds of the valley

— as if everything had begun to tease him with a gentleness that was no gentleness, and to sport with him with a cruelty that was no cruelty, until he seemed to go back years, and the world lay between summer and autumn, and the