Laodice stiffened in the Maccabee's clasp.
"Dost thou hear?" she whispered. "It may be true!"
He shook his head that he had bowed upon her shoulder.
"Let us go," she urged. "Perchance he has comfort for us. Come,
Hesper; let us see what he has for the forlorn."
"Who?" he asked dully.
"They say the Deliverer has come."
He shook his head again, but with her two hands she lifted his face
from its refuge, and urging with her eyes and her hands and her lips
she led him toward the stairs. The Christian looked after them.
"For there shall arise false Christs; and false prophets, and shall
shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they
shall deceive the very elect," he said sorrowfully.
The horror of the city augmented hour by hour. The Jerusalem Laodice
locked upon now was infinitely more afflicted than the one she had
seen in the daylight days before.
The walls were now outlined by fire which illuminated all the city
that lay directly beneath the beacons. To the north gnomish outlines
by hundreds against the flames showed where the soldiers of the
factionists were placing the topmost stones upon an inner wall or
curtain erected just within the Old Wall, which was by this time
shaking and cracking under the assaults of a great siege-engine
without. Titus, awakened by the fall of his tower, had immediately
renewed the attack, although the morning was still some hours distant.
But the citizens were no longer disinterested, no longer wrapped in
hopelessness and dull misery.
Hungry, sleepless, houseless, diseased and mad though they were, their
hollow eyes gleamed now with hope that was almost defiant. Around the
Maccabee and Laodice roared the comment of the multitude.
"They say he climbed to the summit of the outer wall overlooking
Tophet and remains there a target for the Roman arrows, which rebound
from him!" cried one.
"One of John's men says that the heads of the arrows are blunted and
the most of them snapped in two when they are picked up."
"The Romans have ceased to shoot at him!"
"They say that his footprints in the dust on the Tyropean Bridge are
Hebrew letters writing 'Elia' in gold!"
"It is said that the inner Temple is rocking with trumpet blasts and
that John is struck dead!"
"They say that those who believe in him shall ask for whatever they
would have and have it!"
"The breaches in the First Wall have been healed; the old rock is back
in its place!"
"They say that the dead beyond the wall in Tophet are prophesying!"
"There is a bolt of lightning fixed in the sky over Titus' camp. We
are called to go forth and see it fall!"
A voice swept by distantly crying that a woman had eaten her child.
Crazed Posthumus, self-elected guardian of the Law, with the sacred
roll under his arm, declaimed, without any of his audience attending,
that prophecy which this horror fulfilled.