who had followed watched, uplifted with
terror and frenzy, and while they waited for the miracle which should
save, the roof crumbled under them and a grave of thrice heated rock
received them and covered them up.

Below, Nathan, the Christian, seized upon the shoulders of the
Maccabee as he was dashing after the thousands. His face was black
with terror for Laodice. He struggled to throw off Nathan, crying
futilely against the uproar that Laodice was perishing.

"Comfort thee!" the Christian shouted in his ear. "She is saved. She
sent me to thee."

The Maccabee stopped, as if he realized that he need not go on, but
had not comprehended what was said to him.

Nathan dragged him out of the way, still choked with people struggling
to pass on to the Temple or to flee from it. Half-way down the Vale of
Gihon, where speech was a little more possible, the Maccabee, who had
been crying questions, made the old man hear.

"Where is she? Where is she?"

"She has returned to her husband. In love with thee, she has done that
only which she could do and escape sin. She has gone to shelter with
him whom she does not love!"

The Maccabee seized his head in his hands.

"It is like her--like her!" he groaned.

In the Christian's heart he knew how narrowly Laodice had made her
lover's mark for her.

"It is her wish," Nathan continued, "that I teach thee Christ whom she
hath received."

"How can I receive Him, when He sent her from me?" the unhappy man
groaned, unconscious of his contradictions.

"How canst thou reject Him when His teaching led thy love to do that
which thine own lips have confessed to be the better thing?"

"Then what of myself, when I love where I should not love?" the
Maccabee insisted.

"You may suffer and sin not," the Christian said kindly.

The unhappy man dropped to his knees.

"O Christ, why should I resist Thee!" he groaned. "Thou hast stripped
me and made me see that my loss is good!"

The Christian laid his hands on the Maccabee's head.

"Dost thou believe?" he asked.

"Will Christ accept me, coming because I must?"

"It is not laid down how we shall baptize in the thirst of a famine,"
Nathan said, "yet He who sees fit to deny water never yet hath denied
grace."

But the Christian's hand extended over the kneeling man was caught in
a grip steadied with intense emotion. The unknown had seized him.

But for his feeling that this interruption was necessary to the
welfare of another s