lor was possible, but not
discipline. And then the taunt of Messala in the garden of Herod--"All
you conquer in the six days, you lose on the seventh."

So it happened he never approached the chasm thinking to surmount
it, but he was beaten back; and so incessantly had he failed in
the object that he had about given it over, except as a thing of
chance. The hero might be discovered in his day, or he might not.
God only knew. Such his state of mind, there need be no lingering
upon the effect of Malluch's skeleton recital of the story of
Balthasar. He heard it with a bewildering satisfaction--a feeling
that here was the solution of the trouble--here was the requisite
hero found at last; and he a son of the Lion tribe, and King of
the Jews! Behind the hero, lo! the world in arms.

The king implied a kingdom; he was to be a warrior glorious as David,
a ruler wise and magnificent as Solomon; the kingdom was to be a
power against which Rome was to dash itself to pieces. There would
be colossal war, and the agonies of death and birth--then peace,
meaning, of course, Judean dominion forever.

Ben-Hur's heart beat hard as for an instant he had a vision of
Jerusalem the capital of the world, and Zion, the site of the
throne of the Universal Master.

It seemed to the enthusiast rare fortune that the man who had
seen the king was at the tent to which he was going. He could
see him there, and hear him, and learn of him what all he knew
of the coming change, especially all he knew of the time of its
happening. If it were at hand, the campaign with Maxentius should
be abandoned; and he would go and set about organizing and arming
the tribes, that Israel might be ready when the great day of the
restoration began to break.

Now, as we have seen, from Balthasar himself Ben-Hur had the
marvelous story. Was he satisfied?

There was a shadow upon him deeper than that of the cluster of
palms--the shadow of a great uncertainty, which--take note,
O reader! which pertained more to the kingdom than the king.

"What of this kingdom? And what is it to be?" Ben-Hur asked himself
in thought.

Thus early arose the questions which were to follow the Child to
his end, and survive him on earth--incomprehensible in his day,
a dispute in this--an enigma to all who do not or cannot understand
that every man is two in one--a deathless Soul and a mortal Body.

"What is it to be?" he asked.

For us, O reader, the Child himself has answered; but