d
the fear of identification as one of the Lord's disciples troubled him.
He left the crowd and sought partial seclusion in the porch; but there
another maid spied him out, and said to those nearby: "This fellow was
also with Jesus of Nazareth"; to which accusation Peter replied with an
oath: "I do not know the man."

The April night was chilly, and an open fire had been made in the hall
or court of the palace. Peter sat with others at the fire, thinking,
perhaps, that brazen openness was better than skulking caution as a
possible safeguard against detection. About an hour after his former
denials, some of the men around the fire charged him with being a
disciple of Jesus, and referred to his Galilean dialect as evidence that
he was at least a fellow countryman with the high priest's Prisoner;
but, most threatening of all, a kinsman of Malchus, whose ear Peter had
slashed with the sword, asked peremptorily: "Did not I see thee in the
garden with him?" Then Peter went so far in the course of falsehood upon
which he had entered as to curse and swear, and to vehemently declare
for the third time, "I know not the man." As the last profane falsehood
left his lips, the clear notes of a crowing cock broke upon his
ears,[1278] and the remembrance of his Lord's prediction welled up in
his mind. Trembling in wretched realization of his perfidious cowardice,
he turned from the crowd and met the gaze of the suffering Christ, who
from the midst of the insolent mob looked into the face of His boastful,
yet loving but weak apostle. Hastening from the palace, Peter went out
into the night, weeping bitterly. As his later life attests, his tears
were those of real contrition and true repentance.

CHRIST'S FIRST APPEARANCE BEFORE PILATE.

As we have already learned, no Jewish tribunal had authority to inflict
the death penalty; imperial Rome had reserved this prerogative as her
own. The united acclaim of the Sanhedrists, that Jesus was deserving of
death, would be ineffective until sanctioned by the emperor's deputy,
who at that time was Pontius Pilate, the governor, or more properly,
procurator, of Judea, Samaria, and Idumea. Pilate maintained his
official residence at Caesarea,[1279] on the Mediterranean shore; but it
was his custom to be present in Jerusalem at the times of the great
Hebrew feasts, probably in the interest of preserving order, or of
promptly quelling any disturbance amongst the vast and heterogeneous
multitudes by