The City of Delight

She saw the ascending streets of Zion and the tall fortifications

mounting the heights within the city's limits. There she saw the flash

of swords, swung afar off, spears brandished and the running hither

and thither of defenders on the wall. Below she saw the remote

constricted passages between rows of desolate houses, moving with

people, sounding with clamor. There she saw combats, terrible scenes

of frenzy, deaths and unnamable horrors; starvelings gnawing their

nails; shadows of infants pressed to hollow bosoms; old men too weak

to walk that went on hands and knees; young men and young women in

rags that failed to cover them, and wandering skeletons screaming,

"Woe!"

Meanwhile huge stones mounted over the walls and fell within the city;

three great towers planted beyond the walls, out of range of the

Jewish engines and equipped with superior machines, were steadily

devastating the entire quarter near which they were erected. Here

two-thirds of the forces of Jerusalem were concentrated in a vain

effort to resist the dire inroads of these effective engines. Here,

the Maccabee and his Gibborim stood shoulder to shoulder with the

Idumeans and fanatics of Simon and John, and here the half-mad

defenders awakened at last to the fact that only divine interference

could save the city against Rome.

In the south and the east conflagrations roared and crackled, where

burning oil had been scattered over some remaining structures near the

walls. When a great ram began its thunder somewhere near the Sheep

Gate, there came a hollow booming noise of deafening volume from the

charnel pits outside the walls and a black cloud of incredible depth

soared up into the skies.

Laodice, dumb with horror, looked at the prodigy without

understanding, but the woman at her side shuddered.

"God help us!" she exclaimed. "They are vultures!"

Laodice turned to rush back into the cavern and so faced the two men

who stood behind her.

One, at sight of her, shrank with a gasp, and, averting his shaggy

head till the long white locks covered his face, fled back into the

crypt.

The other was gazing with unseeing eyes across groaning Jerusalem.

"I am the man," he was saying aloud, but to himself, "that hath

seen affliction by the rod of His wrath."

The sight of him had a paralyzing effect upon Laodice. She saw, before

her, Nathan, the Christian, who had buried her father, who had blessed

her, who would know and could testify to a surety that she was the

wife of Philadelphus!

She slipped by him without a sound and hurried down into the darkest

corner of the cavern.

Circumstance had found her in her refuge and would drive her away from

this sweet home back to that hateful house, to the man she did not

love!

For many days, with increasing distress, Laodice avoided Nathan, the

Christian. With that fascinated terror which at times forces human

creatures to examine a peril, she felt irresistibly impelled to try

his memory of events, that she might know if indeed he would recognize

her.