n-Hur moved amidst brilliant promises, and glowed
with the thought that the melancholy man, under gentle seeming
and wondrous self-denial, was in fact carrying in disguise the
subtlety of a politician and the genius of a soldier.

Several times also, in the meanwhile, low-set, brawny men,
bareheaded and black-bearded, came and asked for Ben-Hur at
the tent; his interviews with them were always apart; and to
his mother's question who they were he answered,

"Some good friends of mine from Galilee."

Through them he kept informed of the movements of the Nazarene,
and of the schemes of the Nazarene's enemies, Rabbinical and Roman.
That the good man's life was in danger, he knew; but that there
were any bold enough to attempt to take it at that time, he could
not believe. It seemed too securely intrenched in a great fame
and an assured popularity. The very vastness of the attendance in
and about the city brought with it a seeming guaranty of safety.
And yet, to say truth, Ben-Hur's confidence rested most certainly
upon the miraculous power of the Christ. Pondering the subject in
the purely human view, that the master of such authority over life
and death, used so frequently for the good of others, would not
exert it in care of himself was simply as much past belief as it
was past understanding.

Nor should it be forgotten that all these were incidents of
occurrence between the twenty-first day of March--counting
by the modern calendar--and the twenty-fifth. The evening of
the latter day Ben-Hur yielded to his impatience, and rode to
the city, leaving behind him a promise to return in the night.

The horse was fresh, and choosing his own gait, sped swiftly.
The eyes of the clambering vines winked at the rider from the
garden fences on the way; there was nothing else to see him,
nor child nor woman nor man. Through the rocky float in the
hollows of the road the agate hoofs drummed, ringing like cups
of steel; but without notice from any stranger. In the houses
passed there were no tenants; the fires by the tent-doors were
out; the road was deserted; for this was the first Passover eve,
and the hour "between the evenings" when the visiting millions
crowded the city, and the slaughter of lambs in offering reeked
the fore-courts of the Temple, and the priests in ordered lines
caught the flowing blood and carried it swiftly to the dripping
altars--when all was haste and hurry, racing with the stars fast
coming with the si