for the hour is at hand."

Then they cursed him and smote him because of his words of ill-omen, and
so went away, taking no notice of Miriam in the corner. When they had
gone she came forward and looked. His jaw had fallen. Theophilus the
Essene was at peace.

Another hour went by. Once more the door was opened and there appeared
that captain who had ordered her to be killed. With him were two Jews.

"Come, woman," he said, "to take your trial."

"Who is to try me?" Miriam asked.

"The Sanhedrim, or as much as is left of it," he answered. "Stir now, we
have no time for talking."

So Miriam rose and accompanied them across the corner of the vast court,
in the centre of which the Temple rose in all its glittering majesty.
As she walked she noticed that the pavement was dotted with corpses, and
that from the cloisters without went up flames and smoke. They seemed to
be fighting there, for the air was full of the sound of shouting,
above which echoed the dull, continuous thud of battering rams striking
against the massive walls.

They took her into a great chamber supported by pillars of white
marble, where many starving folk, some of them women who carried or led
hollow-cheeked children, sat silent on the floor, or wandered to and
fro, their eyes fixed upon the ground as though in aimless search
for they knew not what. On a dais at the end of the chamber twelve or
fourteen men sat in carved chairs; other chairs stretched to the right
and left of them, but these were empty. The men were clad in magnificent
robes, which seemed to hang ill upon their gaunt forms, and, like those
of the people in the hall, their eyes looked scared and their faces were
white and shrunken. These were all who were left of the Sanhedrim of the
Jews.

As Miriam entered one of their number was delivering judgment upon
a wretched starving man. Miriam looked at the judge. It was her
grandfather, Benoni, but oh! how changed. He who had been tall and
upright was now drawn almost double, his teeth showed yellow between his
lips, his long white beard was ragged and had come out in patches, his
hand shook, his gorgeous head-dress was awry. Nothing was the same about
him except his eyes, which still shone bright, but with a fiercer fire
than of old. They looked like the eyes of a famished wolf.

"Man, have you aught to say?" he was asking of the prisoner.

"Only this," the prisoner answered. "I had hidden some food, my
own food, which I bought