said, "Well, we shall see!"

He turned to Wolferstein again, saying: "Where has Cohen, the
ex-priest, and that herd of disloyal pigs gone?"

"I will not tell you!" replied the captive, proudly.

"You defy me, so be it. Aha, aha!" The "_False Prophet_" laughed
mockingly. Turning to some of the Apleon guards who were massed on two
sides of the Broadway, he said:

"Strip him! and lash him----." He lifted his eyes to the sun,
calculated how it would travel, then, with a fiendish smile, he
indicated one of the pillars of the colonnade, "lash him there were the
sun will reach him."

They tore the clothes from the fine form of the loyal young Jew. Then,
when he was absolutely nude, they fastened him to the pillar.

A honey-seller stood in the crowd. An officer of the guards spied the
man, and called him out. "Take a handful of that fellow's honey," he
ordered one of his men, "and lightly smear that foul Jew's back and
shoulders, his face and ears too. Don't put it on thickly, but as
light as you can, that the insects may find his flesh _through_ the
honey."

The officer's bidding was done. Then began as hideous a martyrdom for
Isaac Wolferstein, as had ever come to a soul loyal to God. The flies,
ants, and a score of other stinging things found him out. His
honey-smeared flesh was black with them.

In his agony and torture he turned his eyes upon Miriam. "My darling!"
he cried, as well as his dried leather tongue and throat would let him.
"God will pardon you, surely, if you bend to circumstances, and wear
the foul sign!"

"But I should never forgive myself, Isaac," she called. "And how could
I meet Jehovah's searching eye, if I failed Him now. Courage, courage
dear one!"

She knew, as we know, that Wolferstein meant no disloyalty to his God,
but that he was momentarily beside himself with the agony of his
torture and his love for her.

With a very suave, mocking smile, "_The False Prophet_" spoke across
the six yards that separated him from Miriam, saying:

"Tell us where your father and that foul herd that went with him, are
located."

"I will not, not even if you torture me to death," she cried.

"Wait until your torture begins, before you brag!" this to Miriam.
Then turning to some of the soldiers, he cried: "Strip her, don't leave
a rag upon her, and treat her from top to toe with that smearing of
honey!"

Wolferstein shut his teeth sharply with the agony that swept over him
at this orde