self out from his saddle and raised his
hand with a knife clenched in it. But the Maccabee with a composed
laugh caught the hand and wrenching it about, dropped it, red and
contracting with pain, at his companion's side.

"Tut! Julian, you are a bad combatant. If you must make way with a
man," the Maccabee advised, "stab him in the back. It is sure--for
you. Ha! Is this Emmaus we see?"

They had ridden up a slight eminence and below them was a disorder of
fallen or decrepit Syrian huts in the hollow place in the hills.

It had been the history of Emmaus for centuries to be known. The feet
of the Crucified One had pressed its ruined streets and His devoted
chroniclers had not failed to set it down in their illuminated
gospels. Army after army in endless procession had thundered through
it since the first invader humbled the glory of Canaan, and few of the
historians had forgotten to record the unimportant incident. Warfare
had hurtled about it for centuries; the Roman army had come upon it
and would continue to come. It had not the spirit to resist; it was
not worthy of conquest. It simply stood in the path of events.

A single citizen appeared at the doorway of the most habitable house
and looked absently over the heads of the new-comers. As they
approached, the villager did not observe them. Instead, he looked at
the near horizon lifted on the shoulder of the hills and meditated on
the signs of the weather. It was Emmaus' habit to find strangers at
its door.

Julian, with natural desire to be first on this perilous ground and
away from the side of the man who had defeated him and laughed at him,
rode up to the door. The villager, seeing the traveler stop, gazed at
him.

Julian had about him an air of blood and breeding first to be remarked
even before his features. The grace of his bearing and the excellence
of his bodily condition were highly aristocratic. His height was good,
his figure modestly athletic as an observance of fine form rather than
a preparation for the arena. He was simply dressed in a light blue
woolen tunic. A handkerchief was bound about his head. His forehead
was very white and half hidden by loose, curling black locks that
escaped with boyish negligence from his head-dress. His eyes were
black, his cheeks tanned but colorless, his mouth mirthful and red but
hard in its outlines. Clean-shaven, lithe, supple, he did not appear
to be more than twenty-two. But there was an even-tempered cynicis