Over the grave he laid a flat stratum of
rock that the wind might not uncover the ruin.
Returning to the niche, he took up the matting with its weight of
chipped stone, and went down through the dark to the line of rocks
opposite the quarries. There he permitted the rubble to slide with a
mixture of earth, like a natural displacement, into the talus, of a
similar nature, at the base of the cliff. The matting he shook and
laid aside. It would serve for a bed in the tomb that night.
Then he destroyed the north wall. In the four months of its existence
the sand had banked against it more than half its height. Each stone
removed in the dismantling was carried away to a new place, until the
whole fortification was, as once it had been, scattered up and down the
slope. The light, dry sand he pitched with his wooden shovel against
the great cube until it all lay where the wind would have piled it had
no second wall stood in its way. By dawn the strong breeze from the
north would cover every footprint and shovel-mark to a level once more.
He went again to the line of rocks and threw the shovel with a sure aim
and a strong arm into the quarries across the valley. To-morrow it
would seem that an Israelite had forgotten one of his tools.
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