326 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
however, that instead of having been absent only a month 
or two they had been gone twenty years, so swiftly had 
time sped. As they grew old, and their beards grey, 
and their frames withered, and the pearls were gone, and 
the rubies spent, they said, ‘We will go back to the city 
of the oasis.’ They set out, each on his camel, one lame, 
the other paralytic, and the third blind, but still the way 
was plain, for had they not trodden it before? and they 
had with them the astrolabe of the astronomer that fixes 
the track by the stars. Time wore on, and presently the 
camels’ feet brought them nearer and nearer the wished- 
for spot. One saw the water, and another the palms, 
but when they came near, it was the mirage, and deep 
sand covered the place. Then they separated, and each 
hastened home; but the blind had no leader, and the 
lame fell from his camel, and the paralytic had no more 
dates, and their whited bones have disappeared.! Many 
another tale, too, I read under the trees that are gone 
like human beings. Sometimes I went forth to the 
nooks in the deep meadows by the hazel mounds, and 
sometimes I parted the ash-tree wands. In my waist- 
coat pocket I had a little red book, made square; I 
never read it out of doors, but I always carried it in 
my pocket till it was frayed and the binding broken ; 
the smallest of red books, but very much therein—the 
poems and sonnets of Mr. William Shakespeare. Some 
' The Arabian commentator thinks this story a myth; the oasis in the 
desert is the time of youth, which passes so quickly, and is not recognised 
till it is gone; the pearls and rubies, the joys of love, which make the 
fortunate lover as a king. In old age every man is afflicted with disease 
or infirmity, every one is paralytic, lame, or blind. They set out to find 
a second youth—the dream of immortality—with the astrolabe, which is 
the creed or Koran all take as their guide. And death separated the 
company. This is only his pragmatic way; the circumstance is doubtless 
historic. 
