an enchanted thing,
moveless, dead-calm, a great desert vulture poised in air. Presently
another and yet another materialized out of the blue, growing larger
as they fell down to the level of their fellow. Slowly the three
swooped down over the heap on the garden walk. The tiny black shapes
that beaded the yard-arms in port spread great wings and soared
solemnly into Ascalon. The three vultures dropped noiselessly on the
pavement.

Cries began suddenly somewhere nearer and instantly the tremendous
booming of a great oriental gong from the heathen quarters swept heavy
floods of sound over the outcry and drowned it. The vultures flew up
hastily and Costobarus saw them for the first time. A chill rushed
over him; revulsion of feeling showed vividly on his face. He shut the
window.

Noon was high over Ascalon and Pestilence was Caesar within its walls.

It was the penalty of warfare, the long black shadow that the passage
of a great army casts upon a battling nation. Physicians could not
give it a name. It seized upon healthy victims, rent them, blasted
them and cast them dead and distorted in their tracks, before help
could reach them. It passed like fire on a high wind through whole
countries and left behind it silence and feeding vultures.

As Costobarus turned from his window to pace up and down his chamber,
Hannah's argument came back to him with new energy. He felt with a
kind of panic that his confident answer to her might have been wrong.
When a girl appeared in the archway, he moved impulsively toward her,
as if to retract the command that would send her out into this land
that the Lord had spoken against, but the strength and repose in her
face communicated itself to him.

Above all other suggestions in her presence was that overpowering
richness of oriental beauty which no other kind in the world may
surpass in its appeal to the loves of men. Enough of the Roman stock
in her line had given structural firmness and stature to a type which
at her age would have developed weight and duskiness, but she was
taller and more slender than the women of her race, and supple and
alive and splendid. About her hips was knotted a silken scarf of red
and white and green with long undulant fringes that added to the lithe
grace in her movements. Under it was a glistening garment of silver
tissue that reached to the small ankles laced about by the ribbons of
white sandals. For sleeves there were netted fringes through which