promised,
and all self-promises are made in dreams awake. Dreaming is the relief
of labor, the wine that sustains us in act. We learn to love labor,
not for itself, but for the opportunity it furnishes for dreaming,
which is the great under-monotone of real life, unheard, unnoticed,
because of its constancy. Living is dreaming. Only in the grave
are there no dreams. Let no one smile at Ben-Hur for doing that
which he himself would have done at that time and place under the
same circumstances.

The sun stooped low in its course. Awhile the flaring disk seemed
to perch itself on the far summit of the mountains in the west,
brazening all the sky above the city, and rimming the walls and
towers with the brightness of gold. Then it disappeared as with
a plunge. The quiet turned Ben-Hur's thought homeward. There was a
point in the sky a little north of the peerless front of the Holy
of Holies upon which he fixed his gaze: under it, straight as a
leadline would have dropped, lay his father's house, if yet the
house endured.

The mellowing influences of the evening mellowed his feelings,
and, putting his ambitions aside, he thought of the duty that
was bringing him to Jerusalem.

Out in the desert while with Ilderim, looking for strong places
and acquainting himself with it generally, as a soldier studies
a country in which he has projected a campaign, a messenger came
one evening with the news that Gratus was removed, and Pontius
Pilate sent to take his place.

Messala was disabled and believed him dead; Gratus was powerless
and gone; why should Ben-Hur longer defer the search for his mother
and sister? There was nothing to fear now. If he could not himself
see into the prisons of Judea, he could examine them with the eyes
of others. If the lost were found, Pilate could have no motive in
holding them in custody--none, at least, which could not be overcome
by purchase. If found, he would carry them to a place of safety,
and then, in calmer mind, his conscience at rest, this one first
duty done, he could give himself more entirely to the King Who
Was Coming. He resolved at once. That night he counselled with
Ilderim, and obtained his assent. Three Arabs came with him to
Jericho, where he left them and the horses, and proceeded alone
and on foot. Malluch was to meet him in Jerusalem.

Ben-Hur's scheme, be it observed, was as yet a generality.

In view of the future, it was advisable to keep himself in hiding
from the au