and
returned to the general room, John's uncle and cousin had been
fetched in from the farm, and he received another hearty welcome.

It almost seemed to him, as he sat down to a comfortable meal, with
Mary and his mother waiting upon him, that the events of the past
two months had been a hideous dream; and that he had never left his
comfortable home on the shore of the Lake of Galilee. As to Jonas,
unaccustomed to kind treatment, or to luxury of any kind, he was
too confused to utter a word. When the meal was over, John was
asked to tell his news; and he related all the stirring incidents
of the siege, and the manner in which he and his companion had
effected his escape.

"We are, no doubt," he concluded, "the sole male survivors of the
siege."

"Not so, my son," Martha said. "There is a report that Josephus has
survived the siege; and that he is a prisoner, in the hands of the
Romans."

"It may be that they have spared him, to grace Vespasian's triumph,
at Rome," John said. "It is their custom, I believe, to carry the
generals they may take in war to Rome, to be slain there."

It was not until some time afterwards that John learned the
particulars of the capture of Josephus. When he saw that all was
lost, Josephus had leaped down the shaft of a dry well, from the
bottom of which a long cavern led off, entirely concealed from the
sight of those above. Here he found forty of the leading citizens,
who had laid in a store of food sufficient to last for many days.
Josephus, at least, who gives his account of all these circumstances,
says that he quite unexpectedly found these forty citizens in hiding
there; but this is improbable in the extreme, and there can be little
doubt that he had, long before, prepared this refuge with them, when
he found that the people would not allow them to attempt to make
their escape from the city.

At night Josephus came up from the well and tried to make his
escape but, finding the Romans everywhere vigilant, he returned to
the place of concealment. On the third day a woman, who was aware
of the hiding place, informed the Romans of it--probably in return
for a promise of freedom, for the Romans were searching high and
low for Josephus; who could not, they were convinced, have escaped
through their lines. Vespasian immediately sent two tribunes,
Paulinus and Gallicanus, to induce him to surrender by promise of
his life.

Josephus refused to come out, and Vespasian sent another tri