"Miriam," he said, then started and checked himself.
"Look!" cried one of the soldiers, "the girl wears pearls, and good ones. Is it your pleasure that I should cut them off?"
"Nay, let them be," he answered. "Neither she nor her pearls are for any of us. Loosen her chain, not her necklet."
So with much trouble they broke the rivets of the chain.
"Can you stand, lady?" said the captain to Miriam.
She shook her head.
"Then I needs must carry you," and stooping down he lifted her in his strong arms as though she had been but a child, and, bidding the soldiers bring the Jew Simeon with them, slowly and with great care descended the staircase up which Miriam had been taken more than sixty hours before.
Passing through the outer doors into the archway where the great gate by which the Romans had gained access to the Temple stood wide, the captain turned into the Court of Israel, where some soldiers who were engaged in dividing spoil looked up laughing and asked him whose baby he had captured. Paying no heed to them he walked across the court, picking his way through the heaps of dead to a range of the southern cloisters which were still standing, where officers might be seen coming and going. Under one of these cloisters, seated on a stool and employed in examining the vessels and other treasures of the Temple, which were brought before him one by one, was Titus. Looking up he saw this strange procession and commanded that they should be brought before him.
"Who is it that you carry in your arms, captain?" he asked.
"That girl, Cæsar," he answered, "who was bound upon the gateway and whom you have orders should not be shot at."
"Does she still live?"
"She lives--no more. Thirst and heat have withered her."
"How came she there?"
"This writing tells you, Cæsar."
Titus read. "Ah!" he said, "Nazarene. An evil sect, worse even than these Jews, or so thought the late divine Nero. Traitress also. Why, the girl must have deserved her fate. But what is this? 'Is doomed to die as God shall appoint before the face of her friends, the Romans.' How are the Romans her friends, I wonder? Girl, if you can speak, tell me who condemned you."
Miriam lifted her dark head from the shoulder of the captain on which it lay and pointed with her finger at the Jew, Simeon.
"Is that so, man?" asked Cæsar. "Now tell the truth, for I shall learn it, and if you lie you die."