ng
him along; club him--kill him!"

With a gust of passion which gave him many times his ordinary force,
Ben-Hur raised himself, turned once about with arms outstretched,
shook the hands off, and rushed through the circle which was fast
hemming him in. The hands snatching at him as he passed tore his
garments from his back, so he ran off the road naked; and the gorge,
in keeping of the friendly darkness, darker there than elsewhere,
received him safe.

Reclaiming his handkerchief and outer garments from the orchard
wall, he followed back to the city gate; thence he went to the
khan, and on the good horse rode to the tents of his people out
by the Tombs of the Kings.

As he rode, he promised himself to see the Nazarene on the
morrow--promised it, not knowing that the unfriended man was taken
straightway to the house of Hannas to be tried that night.

The heart the young man carried to his couch beat so heavily he
could not sleep; for now clearly his renewed Judean kingdom resolved
itself into what it was--only a dream. It is bad enough to see our
castles overthrown one after another with an interval between
in which to recover from the shock, or at least let the echoes
of the fall die away; but when they go altogether--go as ships
sink, as houses tumble in earthquakes--the spirits which endure
it calmly are made of stuffs sterner than common, and Ben-Hur's
was not of them. Through vistas in the future, he began to catch
glimpses of a life serenely beautiful, with a home instead of a
palace of state, and Esther its mistress. Again and again through
the leaden-footed hours of the night he saw the villa by Misenum,
and with his little countrywoman strolled through the garden,
and rested in the panelled atrium; overhead the Neapolitan sky,
at their feet the sunniest of sun-lands and the bluest of bays.

In plainest speech, he was entering upon a crisis with which
to-morrow and the Nazarene will have everything to do.

CHAPTER IX

Next morning, about the second hour, two men rode full speed to
the doors of Ben-Hur's tents, and dismounting, asked to see him.
He was not yet risen, but gave directions for their admission.

"Peace to you, brethren," he said, for they were of his Galileans,
and trusted officers. "Will you be seated?"

"Nay," the senior replied, bluntly, "to sit and be at ease is
to let the Nazarene die. Rise, son of Judah, and go with us.
The judgment has been given. The tree of the cross is a