riam and of her
exposure on the Gate Nicanor, but of what happened to her afterwards
they could gather nothing. So they mourned her as dead.

Now, their food being at length exhausted and the watch of the Romans
having relaxed, they determined, those who were left of them, for some
had died and Ithiel himself was very ill, to attempt to escape from the
hateful vaults that had sheltered them for all these months. A question
arose as to what was to be done with Marcus, now but a shadow of a man,
who still wandered somewhat in his mind, but who had passed the worst of
his sickness and seemed like to live. Some were for abandoning him; some
for sending him back to the Romans; but Nehushta showed that it would be
wise to keep him as a hostage, so that if they were attacked they might
produce him and in return for their care, perhaps buy their lives. In
the end they agreed upon this course, not so much for what they might
gain by it, but because they knew that it would have pleased the lost
maid whom they called their Queen, who had perished to save this man.

So it came about that upon a certain night of rain and storm, when none
were stirring, a number of men with faces white as lepers, of the hue,
indeed, of roots that have pushed in the dark, might have been seen
travelling down the cavern quarries, now tenanted only by the corpses
of those who had perished there from starvation, and so through the hole
beneath the wall into the free air. With them went litters bearing their
sick, and among the sick, Ithiel and Marcus. None hindered their flight,
for the Romans had deserted this part of the ruined city and were
encamped around the towers in the neighbourhood of Mount Sion, where
some few Jews still held out.

Thus it happened that by morning they were well on the road to Jericho,
which, always a desert country, was now quite devoid of life. On they
went, living on roots and such little food as still remained to them,
to Jericho itself, where they found nothing but a ruin haunted by a
few starving wretches. Thence they travelled to their own village, to
discover that, for the most part, this also had been burnt. But certain
caverns in the hillside behind, which they used as store-houses,
remained, and undiscovered in them a secret stock of corn and wine that
gave them food.

Here, then, they camped and set to work to sow the fields which no
Romans or robbers had been able to destroy, and so lived hardly, but
unmolested