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THE STRUGGLE IN THE DESERT.
"And His mercy is on them that fear Him throughout all generations." On the clear, still evening air the words rang out over the desert, sonorous, imposing, peaceful.

As the notes of the verse died away the answer came from other voices in deep, appealing antiphonal: "He hath showed strength with His arm, He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts." Beyond the limits of the monastery there was not a sign of life; neither beast nor bird, nor blade of grass, nor any green thing; only the perfect immemorial blue, and in the east a misty moon, striving in vain to offer light which the earth as yet rejected for the brooding radiance of the descending sun.

But at the great door of the monastery there grew a stately palm, and near by an ancient acacia-tree; and beyond the stone chapel there was a garden of struggling shrubs and green things, with one rose-tree which scattered its pink leaves from year to year upon the loam, since no man gathered bud or blossom.
The triumphant call of the Magnificat, however beautiful, seemed strangely out of place in this lonely island in a sea of sand.

It was the song of a bannered army, marching over the battle-field with conquering voices, and swords as yet unsheathed and red, carrying the spoils of conquest behind the laurelled captain of the host.