ldier mounted on the shoulders
of another and not knowing in his madness that he was a destroying
angel, had cast a torch into and fired the window. Up ran the bright,
devouring flame spreading outwards like a fan, so that within some few
minutes all that side of the Temple was but a roaring furnace. Meanwhile
the Romans were pressing through the Gate Nicanor in an unending stream,
till presently there was a cry of "Make way! Make way!"

Miriam looked down to see a man, bare-headed and with close-cropped
hair, white-robed also and unarmoured, as though he had risen from
his couch, riding on a great war-horse, an ivory wand in his hand and
preceded by an officer who bore the standard of the Roman Eagles. It was
Titus itself, who as he came shouted to the centurions to beat back the
legionaries and extinguish the fire. But who now could beat them back?
As well might he have attempted to restrain the hosts of Gehenna burst
to the upper earth. They were mad with the lust of blood and the lust of
plunder, and even to the voice of their dread lord they paid no heed.

New flames sprang up in other parts of the vast Temple. It was doomed.
The golden doors were burst open and, attended by his officers, Titus
passed through them to view for the first and last time the home of
Jehovah, God of the Jews. From chamber to chamber he passed, yes, even
into the Holy of Holies itself, whence by his command were brought out
the golden candlesticks and the golden table of shrewbread, nor, since
God had deserted His habitation, did any harm come to him for that deed.

Now the Temple which for one thousand one hundred and thirty years had
stood upon the sacred summit of Mount Moriah, went upwards in a sheet of
flame, itself the greatest of the sacrifices that had ever been offered
there; while soldiers stripped it of its gold and ornaments, tossing the
sacred vessels to each other and tearing down the silken curtains of the
shrine. Nor were victims lacking to that sacrifice, for in their blind
fury the Romans fell upon the people who were crowded in the Court of
Israel, and slew them to the number of more than ten thousand, warrior
and priest, citizen and woman and child together, till the court swarm
with blood and the Rock of Offering was black with the dead who had
taken refuge there. Yet these did not perish quite unavenged, for many
of the Romans, their arms filled with priceless spoils of gold and
silver, the treasures of immemorial t