not afraid for my sake. Remember that whomsoever my
Father sends on earth to do his business, him will he watch over. He has
no eyes for me, Joseph said sadly, for I left him to attend my father in
sickness. And, taking Nicodemus' arm, he drew him close, that he might
more safely whisper that two men seemed to be searching in their
garments as if for daggers. Nicodemus knew them to be hirelings in the
pay of the priests. Look, he said, how their hands fidget for their
daggers; the opportunity seems favourable now to stab him; but no, the
crowd closes round his ass again, and the Zealots draw back. God saved
Daniel from the flames and the lions, Joseph answered. But will he,
Nicodemus returned, be able to save him from the priests?

CHAP. XVIII.

Nicodemus invited Joseph to follow Jesus, saying that at a safe distance
he would like to see him ride through the gates into the city; but
Joseph, sorely troubled in his mind, could not answer him, and an hour
later was hastening along the Jericho road, praying all the while that
he might be given strength to keep the promise he had given to his
father. But no sooner was he in Jericho than he began to feel ashamed of
himself, and after resisting the impulse to return to Jesus for two
days he yielded to it, and returned obediently the way he had come,
uncertain whether shame of his cowardice or love was bringing him back.
One or the other it must be, he said, as he came round the bend in the
road into Bethany; and it was soon after passing through that village,
somewhere about three o'clock, that he met his masons coming from Mount
Scropas. Coming from my tomb, he said to himself, and, reining up his
horse and speaking to them, he heard that his tomb was finished. We've
chiselled a great stone to be rolled into the doorway, he heard one of
the masons say; another uttered vauntingly that the stone closed the
tomb perfectly, and Joseph was about to press his horse forward when the
men called after him, and, gathering about his stirrup, they related
that Jesus of Nazareth had been tried and condemned by Pilate that
morning, and was now hanging on a cross, a-top of Golgotha, one of the
masons said: you can see him yourself, Master, if you be going that way,
and between two thieves. One of them was to have been Jesus Bar-Abba,
but the people cried out that he was to be released instead of Jesus. As
Joseph repeated the words, Bar-Abba instead of Jesus, as if he only half
unde