he day without revealed to him in a few steps, a
veiled woman, a deformed old man and a young rabbi. He did not need to
take the evidence of her dress or of her companion to recognize under
this veil the girl whom he had won from Julian of Ephesus, in the
hills, that very morning.

As if in response to his inner hope that she would see him, she raised
her eyes at the moment she passed, and started quickly. Even under the
shelter of her veil he saw her flush.

The next instant she was out of the synagogue and gone.

The Maccabee hesitated restlessly, forgot his mission to the synagogue
and then, with no definite purpose, followed.

At the edge of town, where the huddle of huts left off and the gravel
and rock and cedar began, he saw the priest dismiss the pair with his
blessing and turn back.

Undecided, restless and regretful, the Maccabee lingered, looking
after her as she went into the hills, unattended, except for an
anomalous old man. The sun of noon shone on her silver dress that the
dust of the wayside had not tarnished. He was gloomy and wistful
without understanding his discomfort, and afraid for the beautiful
unknown going out for seven days into the unfriendly wilderness.

There was the click of a horse's hoof beside him. He glanced up with a
nervous start to see Julian of Ephesus, scowling, at hand.

"It is time," he said, "for us to be off."

The Maccabee instantly determined that Julian of Ephesus should not
come up with this defenseless girl again.

"I am not ready," he returned promptly.

"It was three days, this morning, that you have lost. To-morrow it
will be four."

"And Sabbath, it will be seven. A long time, a long time!"

The Maccabee turned and went back to the khan. A gap in the hills had
hidden the girl in the silver tissue, and the blitheness of the
Maccabee's spirit had gone with her.

Chapter V

BY THE WAYSIDE

By sunset, the Maccabee and Julian of Ephesus had taken the road to
Jerusalem again.

As they reached the crest of a series of ridges there lay before them
a long gentle slope smooth and dun-colored as some soft pelt, dropping
down into a tender vale with levels of purple vapor hanging over it.
At the end of this declivity, leagues in length, was a faint blue
shape, cloudlike and almost merged with the cold color of the eastern
horizon, but suddenly developing at its summit a delicate white peak.
The sunset reaching it as they rode changed the point to a pi