The march had been long and full of
hardships, mingled often with real bodily suffering, and those who had
escaped without disease were reckoned fortunate. The war was still
before them, but no imaginable combat with men could be compared with
the long struggle for existence through which the Crusaders had won
their way to Constantinople. It seemed as if the worst were altogether
past and as if rest-time had come already.
In the cool and shady retreat from the crowd to which Gilbert's
footsteps had led him, an Italian might have lain dreaming half the
day, and an Oriental would have sat down to withdraw himself from the
material tedium of life in the superior atmosphere of kef. But
Gilbert was chilled to a different temper by the colder and harder life
of the North, and the springs of his nature could not be so easily and
wholly relaxed. In a few moments he grew restless, stood upright and
began to look about him, letting his hand fall by his side from its
hold on the wall. The walls were solid from end to end of the narrow
lane, and not less than three times a man's height. The stones of the
masonry were damp for six or seven feet above the ground, showing that
the earth was at a higher level behind them than in the lane, and the
trees of which the branches overhung the way were of the sort found in
Eastern gardens, a cedar of Lebanon on the one side, a sycamore on the
other; and with the light breeze there came to Gilbert's nostrils the
aromatic scent of young oranges still green on the trees.
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