"We will eat here," the Maccabee said abruptly to Julian.

"Eat!" Julian exclaimed. "What?"

The Maccabee signed to the pack on Julian's horse. Julian dismounted,

shaking his head.

"What a savage appetite this travel in the untaught wilds of Judea

hath bred in you, my cousin! You, whom once a crust of bread and a cup

of wine would satisfy!"

But the Maccabee climbed out of the roadway and, finding a sheltered

spot behind a boulder, kicked together some of the dead weeds and

twigs and set fire to the heap with flint and steel. Then he lost

interest in the preparation of his comforts. He turned to look up at

the faint column of illumination in the little copse of cedars and

presently, stealthily, went that way.

It was a poor encampment that he came upon.

From the low-growing limbs of a couple of gnarly cedars, old Momus had

stretched the sheepskins which Joseph, the shepherd, had given them.

Three sides of the shelter were protected thus, and the fourth side

opened down-hill, with a low fire screening them from the mountain

wind. Within this inclosure, wrapped in the coarse mantle of her

servant, sat Laodice. She had raised her veil and its misty texture

flowed like a web of frost over her brilliant hair and framed her face

in cold vapor. In spite of the marks of grief that had exhausted her

tears, the fatigue and discomfort, she seemed, to the Maccabee's eyes,

more than ever lovely. He was angry with the hieratic banishment that

sent her out to subsist by the roadside for seven days in early

spring; angry with the harsh inhospitality of the hills; and angrier

that he could not change it all. He looked at the old mute to see that

he was carefully putting away the remnants of a meal of durra bread

and curds. The primitive gallantry of the original man stirred in the

Maccabee. He had come unseen; with silent step he departed.

A little later he stepped boldly into the circle of light from their

camp-fire. To Laodice, in her lowly position, he seemed superhumanly

big and splendid. Without mantle or any of the accessories that would

show preparation against the cold, his bare arms and limbs and dark

face, tanned, hardy and resolute, seemed to be those of a strong

aborigine, sturdy friend of all of nature's rougher moods.

He did not look at Momus, who got up as quickly as he might at the

intrusion of the big stranger. His dark eyes rested on Laodice, who

sat transfixed with her sudden recognition of the visitor.

He held in one hand a brace of fowls, in the other a skin of wine.

When he spoke the polish of the Ephesian andronitis in his voice and

manner destroyed the primitive illusion.




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