affected, I could see he wuz, though he tried to conceal it by
nibblin' on some figs he had bought that mornin'.

Miss Meechim wuz all carried away with the seen as the guide pinted
out the different places. Robert Strong and Dorothy didn't seem to
want to talk much, but their faces wuz writ over with characters of
rapt and reverential emotion.

Arvilly for once seemed to forgit her canvassin' and her keen bright
eyes wuz softened into deep thought and feeling. Tommy, who had heard
us talkin' about Herod walling in that part of the city, wonnered how
any man could be so wicked as the cruel king who killed all the little
children, and he wonnered if there ever wuz another king in the hull
world so wicked.

And my Josiah soothed his childish feelings by assuring him that all
such wicked rulers wuz dead and buried ages ago.

And so queer is Arvilly's mind since what she's went through that she
spoke right up and told Tommy that there wuz lots of rulers to-day
jest as wicked and fur wickeder. Sez she, "There are plenty of men in
every city in America that get the right from the rulers of the
country to destroy children in a much worse way than to cut their
heads off."

Sez she, "There are men who entice young children to smoke cigarettes,
drugged on purpose to form a thirst for strong drink, then enticed
into drinking-dives, where goodness and innocence are murdered and
evil passions planted and nursed into life, for the overthrowing of
all their goodness, for the murder of their family's safety and
happiness and making them the nation's menace and greatest danger."

And Tommy wonnered and wonnered what could make men do so, and so did
I.

And Arvilly sez, "What is cuttin' off the heads of twenty or thirty
babies compared to the thousands and thousands of murders that this
licensed evil causes every year?"

Tommy's pretty face looked sad and he sez: "Why do good folks let it
go on?"

And Arvilly sez, "Heaven knows--I don't. But I've cleared my skirts in
the matter. There won't be any innocent blood on my skirts at the last
day."

And Tommy bent his head and looked intently at the bottom of her
dress; and I see my pardner furtively glance at the bottom of his own
pantaloons; he acted guilty.

It is about two milds and a quarter round the city; the walls are
thirty or forty feet high; there are thirty-four towers on the walls,
and the city has eight gates. It has a population of one hundred
thousand, more Jews