e no
occasion for Mathias' teaching for some years. Years, sayest thou,
Saddoc? Amos interjected. I spoke plainly, did I not? Saddoc answered.
If it will take us years to build the wall, Amos said, we may as well
save ourselves the trouble of becoming builders, for the robbers will be
upon us before it is high enough to keep them out; we shall lose our
lives before a half-finished wall, and methinks I might as well have
been left to my flock on the hills. Thou speakest truly, Saddoc replied,
for I doubt if thou wilt prove a better builder than thou wast a
shepherd. If my sheep were poor, thy interpretations of the Scriptures
are poorer still, Amos said, and the twain fell to quarrelling apart,
while the brethren took counsel together. If this mischief did not
befall them, and a wall twenty feet high and many feet in thickness were
raised, would they be able to store enough food in the cave to bear a
three-months' siege? And would they be able to continue the cultivation
of their figs along the terrace if robbers were at the gates? But a
siege, Manahem answered these disputants, cannot well be, for the
shepherds on the hills would carry the news of the siege to Jericho,
whence troops would be sent to our help, and at their approach the
robbers would flee into the hills. What we have to fear is not a siege,
but a sudden assault; and from a successful assault a wall will save us.
That is true, Saddoc said. And to defend the wall we must possess
ourselves of weapons, Caleb, Benjamin and Eleakim cried; and Shallum
told them that a certain hard wood, of which there was an abundance in
Jericho, could be shaped into cutlasses whereby a man's head might be
struck off at a blow.

At these words the brethren took heart, and Hazael selected Shallum for
messenger to go to Jericho for the wood, and a few days afterwards the
Essenes were busy carving cutlasses for their defence, and designing a
great wall with towers, whilst others were among the cliffs hurling down
great masses of stone out of which a wall would soon begin to rise.

And every day, an hour after sunrise, the Essenes were quarrying stone
and building their wall, and though they had designed it on a great
scale, it rose so fast that in two months they were bragging that it
would protect them against the great robber, Saulous, a pillager of many
caravans, of whom Jesus had much to say when he came down from the
hills. The wall will save you, Jesus said, from him. But wh