ded "_The False Prophet._" The grim
things were brought.

"Loose the carrion!" came the next command.

A dozen hands were busy in a moment with the knotted cords. Miriam was
the first to be fully released. Her eyes were closed; her breaths were
heavy, slow throbs; her beautiful form bent and swayed; and the soldier
who held her had to bear all her weight. He carried her to the block;
then, waiting, glanced for instructions to where the officer of the
guards, and "_The False Prophet_" stood.

An executioner, toying with his axe, stood by the side of the block.

"Off with it!" called "_The False Prophet_," laughingly.

The soldier lifted the nude, insensible form of the beautiful girl so
that her neck rested in the hollow of the block. He held her in
position. The axe fell. The head rolled to the stone pave. A woman
close by, caught the head by the hair, twisted her fingers well into
the beautiful black swathes, and swinging the gory thing around her
head, let it fly from her hand, shouting, as it hurled through the air.

"A kick-off, for the _first_ team!"

The mob, among whom the head fell, began to play football with it. A
moment later, the head of Isaac Wolferstein rolled to the pavement, and
a second woman caught that and hurled it over the heads of the people
in the opposite direction to that in which Miriam's head had gone.

"A kick-off," shouted the hurler of the head, "for the _second_ team."
[1]

* * * * * *

This effort to trace Cohen and the fugitives had failed, but the
knowledge soon came in, in four or five different ways. One of the
wireless messages had brought a clue. Some traders brought in a fuller
clue, and rapidly other news came to hand.

It soon became perfectly clear that there existed some kind of evident
understanding between the various fleeing crowds, and that their first
place of united meeting was to be one of the agricultural colonies near
to the old Kadesh-Barnea.

By this time the fugitives had had four good days start. Apleon
ordered an enormous body of troops to go in pursuit, and to slay or
capture the fugitives--capture, by preference, that they might be
publicly tortured and beheaded.

Mad with the lust for blood, and that fouler lust of Religious revenge,
the pursuing host sped southwards. The wondrous new motor-trains, that
would career over hillocks easier than a thoroughbred hunter gallops
over a turfy down, carried the