The Maccabee signed to the pack on Julian's horse. Julian dismounted,
shaking his head.

"What a savage appetite this travel in the untaught wilds of Judea
hath bred in you, my cousin! You, whom once a crust of bread and a cup
of wine would satisfy!"

But the Maccabee climbed out of the roadway and, finding a sheltered
spot behind a boulder, kicked together some of the dead weeds and
twigs and set fire to the heap with flint and steel. Then he lost
interest in the preparation of his comforts. He turned to look up at
the faint column of illumination in the little copse of cedars and
presently, stealthily, went that way.

It was a poor encampment that he came upon.

From the low-growing limbs of a couple of gnarly cedars, old Momus had
stretched the sheepskins which Joseph, the shepherd, had given them.
Three sides of the shelter were protected thus, and the fourth side
opened down-hill, with a low fire screening them from the mountain
wind. Within this inclosure, wrapped in the coarse mantle of her
servant, sat Laodice. She had raised her veil and its misty texture
flowed like a web of frost over her brilliant hair and framed her face
in cold vapor. In spite of the marks of grief that had exhausted her
tears, the fatigue and discomfort, she seemed, to the Maccabee's eyes,
more than ever lovely. He was angry with the hieratic banishment that
sent her out to subsist by the roadside for seven days in early
spring; angry with the harsh inhospitality of the hills; and angrier
that he could not change it all. He looked at the old mute to see that
he was carefully putting away the remnants of a meal of durra bread
and curds. The primitive gallantry of the original man stirred in the
Maccabee. He had come unseen; with silent step he departed.

A little later he stepped boldly into the circle of light from their
camp-fire. To Laodice, in her lowly position, he seemed superhumanly
big and splendid. Without mantle or any of the accessories that would
show preparation against the cold, his bare arms and limbs and dark
face, tanned, hardy and resolute, seemed to be those of a strong
aborigine, sturdy friend of all of nature's rougher moods.

He did not look at Momus, who got up as quickly as he might at the
intrusion of the big stranger. His dark eyes rested on Laodice, who
sat transfixed with her sudden recognition of the visitor.

He held in one hand a brace of fowls, in the other a skin of wine.

When he spoke the pol