, and Duzi-Ben-Levi were the Gizbarim, or
sub-collectors of the offering, in the holy city of Jerusalem.

"Verily," replied the Pharisee; "let us hasten: for this generosity
in the heathen is unwonted; and fickle-mindedness has ever been an
attribute of the worshippers of Baal."

"'That they are fickle-minded and treacherous is as true as the
Pentateuch," said Buzi-Ben-Levi, "but that is only toward the people
of Adonai. When was it ever known that the Ammonites proved wanting to
their own interests? Methinks it is no great stretch of generosity to
allow us lambs for the altar of the Lord, receiving in lieu thereof
thirty silver shekels per head!"

"Thou forgettest, however, Ben-Levi," replied Abel-Phittim, "that the
Roman Pompey, who is now impiously besieging the city of the Most High,
has no assurity that we apply not the lambs thus purchased for the
altar, to the sustenance of the body, rather than of the spirit."

"Now, by the five corners of my beard!" shouted the Pharisee, who
belonged to the sect called The Dashers (that little knot of saints
whose manner of _dashing _and lacerating the feet against the
pavement was long a thorn and a reproach to less zealous devotees-a
stumbling-block to less gifted perambulators)--"by the five corners of
that beard which, as a priest, I am forbidden to shave!-have we lived
to see the day when a blaspheming and idolatrous upstart of Rome shall
accuse us of appropriating to the appetites of the flesh the most holy
and consecrated elements? Have we lived to see the day when--"'

"Let us not question the motives of the Philistine," interrupted
Abel-Phittim' "for to-day we profit for the first time by his avarice
or by his generosity; but rather let us hurry to the ramparts, lest
offerings should be wanting for that altar whose fire the rains of
heaven can not extinguish, and whose pillars of smoke no tempest can
turn aside."

That part of the city to which our worthy Gizbarim now hastened, and
which bore the name of its architect, King David, was esteemed the most
strongly fortified district of Jerusalem; being situated upon the steep
and lofty hill of Zion. Here, a broad, deep, circumvallatory trench,
hewn from the solid rock, was defended by a wall of great strength
erected upon its inner edge. This wall was adorned, at regular
interspaces, by square towers of white marble; the lowest sixty, and the
highest one hundred and twenty cubits in height. But, in the vicinity of