back,
and camels, and in chariots they ran, as well as on foot; but then
as if it were mad at them for what they had done, and had taken up
the cause of the unoffending and friendless dead, the earthquake
pursued them, and tossed them about, and flung them down,
and terrified them yet more by the horrible noise of great
rocks grinding and rending beneath them. They beat their breasts
and shrieked with fear. His blood was upon them! The home-bred
and the foreign, priest and layman, beggar, Sadducee, Pharisee,
were overtaken in the race, and tumbled about indiscriminately.
If they called on the Lord, the outraged earth answered for him in
fury, and dealt them all alike. It did not even know wherein the
high-priest was better than his guilty brethren; overtaking him,
it tripped him up also, and smirched the fringimg of his robe,
and filled the golden bells with sand, and his mouth with dust.
He and his people were alike in the one thing at least--the blood
of the Nazarene was upon them all!

When the sunlight broke upon the crucifixion, the mother of the
Nazarene, the disciple, and the faithful women of Galilee, the
centurion and his soldiers, and Ben-Hur and his party, were all
who remained upon the hill. These had not time to observe the
flight of the multitude; they were too loudly called upon to
take care of themselves.

"Seat thyself here," said Ben-Hur to Esther, making a place for
her at her father's feet. "Now cover thine eyes and look not up;
but put thy trust in God, and the spirit of yon just man so foully
slain."

"Nay," said Simonides, reverently, "let us henceforth speak of
him as the Christ."

"Be it so," said Ben-Hur.

Presently a wave of the earthquake struck the hill. The shrieks
of the thieves upon the reeling crosses were terrible to hear.
Though giddy with the movements of the ground, Ben-Hur had time to
look at Balthasar, and beheld him prostrate and still. He ran to him
and called--there was no reply. The good man was dead! Then Ben-Hur
remembered to have heard a cry in answer, as it were, to the scream
of the Nazarene in his last moment; but he had not looked to see
from whom it had proceeded; and ever after he believed the spirit
of the Egyptian accompanied that of his Master over the boundary
into the kingdom of Paradise. The idea rested not only upon the
cry heard, but upon the exceeding fitness of the distinction.
If faith were worthy reward in the person of Gaspar, and love
in that of