y
pursuing, heard with a contracting heart that she was crying softly
from terror and bewilderment. Not yet, however, had she approached the
danger of Jerusalem, which John had kept far removed from the
precincts of Amaryllis' house.

She was entering Akra. The heap of grain, yet burning, showed a dull
black-red mound over which towered a column of strong incense. Here,
for the night was cool, lay in circles many of the unhoused Passover
guests. Here, also, was wakefulness and the hatchment of evil.

The running girl was upon them before she knew it. One of the figures
that sat with its back to the dull glow saw her approaching. Instantly
he rose upon one knee and snatched her dress as she ran.

Jerked from her balance, she screamed and threw out her hands to keep
from falling upon the shoulders of her assailant. One or two others
with unintelligible sounds struggled up, and as she fell, the Maccabee
leaped from the darkness, wrenched her from the grasp of her captor,
and warding off attack with his knife, fled with her into the
darkness.

The transfer of control over her had been made so swiftly that in her
stupor of terror she hardly realized it. She was struggling silently
and strongly in his hold, when he clasped her to him with a firmer
impulsive embrace and whispered to her:

"Comfort thee, dear heart! It is I, Hesper!"

She ceased to resist so suddenly and was so tensely still that he knew
the shock of immense reaction was having its way with her.

He knew without asking that she had been forced to leave the shelter
of the Greek's roof, and though his rage threatened to rise up and
blind him he was not entirely unaware of the benefit the inhospitality
of others had given him. At last she was with him; entirely in his
care.

It was a safe shelter into which she was brought, but no luxurious
one. There was light enough from the single torch stuck in a crevice
in the ancient rock to show that it was habitable. The immense floor
was packed hard by the trampling of many feet; overhead, lost in
gloom, there must have been a rocky roof, but it was invisible. On the
ledges of rocks were belongings by heaps and collections, showing that
this was an abiding-place for great numbers. In the far shadows she
distinguished long, silent, mummied windrows of men wrapped in
blankets, sleeping. Huge gloomy piles of provisions filled up shadowy
corners; about under the light was the litter left in the wake of
human counse