ad been set up and since sunrise a vast crowd
had thronged the roadway, for it had early become news that he who had
been acclaimed King of the Jews had been hanged between two thieves,
and many there were who were curious to see the sad plight of the King.

As the mocking crowd surged about the hill-top, and the sun was shining
high in the heavens, the victim on the center cross uttered a cry which
seemed to vibrate into the very element and turn the light of midday
into impenetrable darkness and shake the earth with a mighty trembling.
Rocks rattled down the ravine; tomb-doors were shaken from their
holdings; the moaning of wind, like a dying breath, passed the length
of the valley below and from the black depths a leper cried, "Unclean!
Unclean!" his despairing wail answered by the scream of a maniac.

In the midst of the darkness there were fitful outbursts of dull green
light, like the expiring effort of a perishing sun, and in these
ghostly gleams people could be seen running to and fro. Among them
were a woman and a man; the woman wrapped in a long cloak, the man,
mighty in size, with scarce enough garments to cover his body, but to
these the woman clung as they crept behind the wayside rock for
shelter. Scarcely had they settled close to the rock than it began to
tremble, and then the stone rolled away from before it and a skeleton
toppled out, falling at the very feet of the woman.

With a scream she cried, "My dream! My dream! Even now it cometh to
pass! Help! Help!"

The man drew the woman away from the skeleton and closer to the
trembling rock.

"Even the dead come forth!" she wailed. "It is the end of all things!
By the death of us all shall the gods avenge the death of the Jew! Oh,
my eunuch, save me! Thou art strong! Thou wert a follower and a
believer. Save me!" and she threw herself into his arms.

"Calm thyself, most noble Claudia," the man said in quiet tones. "That
which maketh the earth tremble until stones roll from the grave, is
naught but the same power that piles still water into waves of rocking
mountains and that breaks the cedars of the hills as if they were dead
grass. Fear not."

"Thou sayest--but feel the rocking of the earth."

"Yea, it doth tremble. Yet hath it trembled before and will tremble
again. In Thrace have I seen the earth shake open in yawning pits."

"But the sun is dark at midday! What meaneth it?"

"Something hath come between the sun and thy visio