ARGONAUT ANB GEOMETER. 223 



"The story is told of some persecuted Protestant 

 leader during Reformation times, whose refuge was an 

 oven. 



" Saint Felix of Nola had a similar adventure, as re- 

 corded in the 'Lives of the Saints.' Being hotly 

 pursued b}^ his enemies, he crept through a hole in an 

 old ruined wall, which was instantly closed up by the 

 spinning-work of spiders. His pursuers, never imagin- 

 ing that anything could have lately passed where they 

 saw so compact a spider's web, after a fruitless search 

 elsewhere returned in the evening without their prey. 

 Felix found among the ruins between two houses an 

 old well half dry, in which he hid himself for six 

 months, during which time he was cared for by a 

 devout Christian woman. 



"Long before that Mohammed had the same ex- 

 perience Avhen fleeing from the Koreishites with Abu- 

 beker. The two men, says the tradition, hid them- 

 selves for three days in a cave, over the mouth of 

 which a spider spread its web and a pigeon laid two 

 eggs there, the sight of which prevented the pursuers 

 from searching within, and thus the prophet and his 

 friend were preserved. 



" But the earliest incident of this sort which I recall 

 is told of David, the King of Israel. The Jews have a 

 tradition that when he was fleeing before Saul he took 

 refuge within one of the spacious limestone caverns 

 found in southern Palestine. The friendly spider there- 

 upon appeared precisely as in the other cases ; the pur- 

 suers passed on, and the fugitive escaped." 



