f these things are done in the green
tree, what will be done in the dry?"

And in this entreaty, in which he exhorted them to view disaster otherwise
than from the external and evanescent aspect, the voice of the prophet
rang once more.

Mary as yet had not realized the full portent of the soldiery and the mob.
When it was approaching it had occurred to her that it might be another
triumphal escort, such as she had once seen surround him on his way to a
feast. As it advanced, the roar bewildered, and she had ceased to
conjecture; then the Master had fallen, and the old Jew had vomited his
slime. At the moment it was that, and that only, which had impressed her,
and she had answered with the force of that new strength which suddenly
she had found. But now at the sight of the women beating their breasts,
and the blood-stained face of the Master, an inkling came to her; she
stared open-mouthed at the cross, at Calcol, and at the executioners that
were there.

Then immediately that horrible longing to know the worst beset her, and
she darted to where the centurion stood.

"What is it?" she gasped. "What are you to do with him?"

By way of answer Calcol extended his arms straight out from either side,
his head thrown back. He was a good-natured ruffian, with clear and
pleasant eyes.

"Not crucify?" she cried. "Tell me, it is not that?"

Calcol nodded. To him one Jew more, one Jew less, was immaterial, provided
he had his pay, and the prospect of a return to Rome was not too long
delayed. Yet none the less in some misty way he wondered why this woman,
with her splendid hair and scorching eyes, should have upbraided the
tetrarch and abused the procurator because of the friendless Galilean whom
he was leading to the cross. Woman to him, however, was, as she has been
to others wiser than he, an enigma he failed to solve. And so he nodded
merely, not unkindly, and smiled in Mary's face.

The horrible longing now was stilled. She knew the worst; yet as the
knowledge of it penetrated her being, it seemed to her as though it could
not be true, that she was the plaything of some hallucination, her mind
inhabited by a nightmare from which she must presently awake. The howl of
the impatient mob undeceived her. It was real; it was actual; it was life.
She stared at Calcol, her fair mouth agape. There were many things she
wanted to say; her thoughts teemed with arguments, her mind with
persuasions; but she could utter nothing; s