barren wastes of Galilee and, wrapped in
a dark cloak, had listened in solitary silence to words and teachings
such as he had never dreamed of before.

"If only I could have understood Thee better then," he murmured; "if
more of Thy precious words had fallen on mine ear.... I might have told
her then something of what Thou didst say ... I could have found the
words to make her understand.... But now I am ignorant and forlorn....
Oh, Man of Galilee! Thou didst die so soon ... and left so many of us
groping in the darkness.... Thou Son of God, come back to me, if only in
a dream ... show me the way, the truth, the light; show me the star
which they say guided the shepherds to Thy cradle ... give me Thy cross,
and let me walk once more on Golgotha to Thee."

And even as these words of passionate longing escaped half audibly from
his lips his eyes wandered round the seven hills of Rome, and suddenly
the highest peak beyond the Forum appeared to him transfigured in the
night. Memory with a swift hand drew aside the veil of the present and
in a vision showed him a picture of the past. The marble temples of
pagan gods disappeared, the hill became bleak and precipitous and dark;
great stillness reigned around, save where from afar there came at times
the distant roll of thunder. The sky was overcast, great banks of cloud,
the colour of lead, with blood-red lights within their massive bosoms,
swept storm-tossed across the firmament.

Then from the valley below there came, vaguely remote at first, then
rising louder and louder, a sound as when a mighty torrent rushes
onwards in its course; and as Taurus Antinor gazed now on that
dream-hill, memory showed him, surging like a tempestuous sea, thousands
upon thousands of human heads, all tending upwards to the summit of the
hill.

They came--the great multitude--they came, and still they came; and like
gigantic breakers on a smooth shore, waves of human beings scattered
themselves and dispersed upon that hill.

And amongst them all, isolated, walking with bent back and thorn-crowned
head well-nigh bowed to the dust, came a Man bearing a Cross.

Taurus Antinor saw Him even now as he had seen Him then, with blood and
sweat dripping from His brow, the pale, patient face serene and set, the
eyes half closed in agony still glowing with unutterable love and with
the perfect peace of complete sacrifice.

And among the sea of faces that gazed on that solitary figure Taurus
Antinor h