The City of Delight

Laodice was looking at him with awed, but understanding eyes.

"It was Seraiah," she said in a low voice. "He entered this place on a

day last week. All the city is afraid of him."

"So my soldiers told me afterward, between chattering teeth. He almost

damped our patriotism. We uttered our bombast, sealed our vows and

made our sorties, thereafter, every man of us, with our chins over our

shoulders! Spare me Seraiah! He has too much influence!"

"Is he a madman?" she asked.

"Or else a supernatural man. Would I could manage men by the fall of

my foot, as he does. I should have Jerusalem's fealty by to-morrow

night. But it was near early morning that the other incident occurred.

That was of another nature. We stumbled upon a pair huddled in the

shadow of a building. We stumbled upon many figures in shadows, but

one of these murmured a name that I heard once in the hills hereabout,

and I had profited by that name, so I halted. It was an old man,

starved and weary and ill; with him was a gray ghost of a creature

with long white hair, that seemed to be struck with terror the instant

it heard my voice. At first I thought it was a withered old woman, but

it proved to be a man--somehow seeming young in spite of the

snow-white hair and wasted frame. I had them taken up, the gray ghost

resisting mightily, and carried to my burrow where they now lie. They

eat; they take up space; they add nothing to my cause. But I can not

turn them out. The old man disarms me by that name."

He looked down at her with softening eyes.

"And the shepherd held thy hand?" he said softly. She turned upon him

in astonishment. How much of joy and surprise and hope he could bring

in a single visit, she thought. Now, behold he had met that same

delightsome child that had passed like a dash of sunlight across her

dark day.

"Did you meet the shepherd of Pella?" she asked. Instant deduction

supplied her the name that had moved him to compassion. "And did he

serve you in the name of his Prophet?" she whispered.

"He saved my life in the name of his Christ, but was tender of me in

thy name," he replied.

"His is a sweet apostasy," she ventured bravely, "if it be his

apostasy that made him kind. And I--I owe him much, that he repaired

that for which I feel at fault."

He smiled at her and stroked her hand once, soothingly.

"Let us not remember blames or injury. It damages my happiness. But of

this apostasy that the shepherd preached me. I passed the stones of

the Palace of Antipas to-day, a ruin, black and shapeless. Thought I,

where is the majesty of order and the beauty of strength that was this

place? And then," his voice fell to a whisper, "beshrew the boy's

tattle, I said, the footprints of his Prophet before the throne of

Herod are erased."