Holt, Emily Sarah: The Well in the Desert. V1. 16 July 2010
 

Emily Sarah Holt (1836-1893) was an English novelist.
She wrote about fifty books, mainly for children. Most of her work can be classified as historical novels. Her work has a Protestant religious theme.

Excerpt
It is said that only travellers in the arid lands of the East really know the value of water. To them the Well in the Desert is a treasure and a blessing: unspeakably so, when the water is pure and sweet; yet even though it be salt and brackish, it may still save life.
Was it less so, in a figurative sense, to the travellers through that great desert of the Middle Ages, wherein the wells were so few and far between? True, the water was brackish; man had denied the streams, and filled up the wells with stones; yet for all this it was God-given, and to those who came, and dug for the old spring, and drank, it was the water of eternal life. The cry was still sounding down the ages.