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The City of Delight

Page 50

It was a night that the Maccabee did not readily forget. Since the

girl had moved on to avoid him, he had become alive to a delinquency

that was more of a sensation than an admission. His thought of her,

that had been a diversion before, now seemed to be a transgression. An

incident of this nature during the fourteen years of his life in

Ephesus would have engaged his conscience only a moment if at all, but

at this last hour it amounted to a deflection from his newly resolved

uprightness.

Julian rode in a constant air of expectancy and increasing irritation.

The slightest sound from the haunted hills elicited a start from him

and his intense attention until the origin of the sound proved itself.

Many Passover pilgrims who had proceeded by night passed under his

close scrutiny and from time to time he stopped the Maccabee in a

speech with a peremptory command to listen. All this engaged the

Maccabee's interest, but he made no comment until, on occasion of his

casual word in praise of the fidelity of Aquila, Julian flew into a

rage and reviled the emissary until the Maccabee brought him up with a

sharp word.

"Enough of that!" he exclaimed. "What ails you, man?"

Julian caught his breath and after a silence replied in a voice

considerably sweetened that Aquila was a conscienceless pagan and not

to be praised till he was dead. But the Maccabee, with the girl

uppermost in his mind, believed that his cousin was inwardly resenting

his preëmption of the pretty stranger. The fact that Julian had

changed the pace of their advance confirmed him in this suspicion.

From the smart trot that they had maintained from the time they had

left Cæsarea, they had declined to a walk. Julian next showed

inclination to loiter. He spent an unusual length of time at every

spring at which they watered their horses; an unseen break in his

harness engaged a prolonged halt on the road; he stopped at an

unroofed hut to rouse sleeping Passover pilgrims who had taken refuge

within to ask how far they were from Jerusalem, and wrangled with the

sleepy Jew for many minutes over the hazy estimate the man had given

him. With each of these pretenses the Maccabee's conviction grew that

the girl had something to do with the altered behavior of his cousin.

And with that growing conviction, he became the more convinced that he

ought to maintain an espionage of Julian.

At midnight they were both tired, exasperated, moody, and determined

against each other. They had not journeyed thirty furlongs.

In one of the high valleys in the hills a great well bubbled up from a

hollow by the road, overflowed the stone basin that the ancients had

built for it and wasted itself in the undrained soil about. Here,

then, was one of the few marshes in Judea. The road by a series of

arches crossed it and continued up the shoulder of the hills toward

the east. All about it flourished the young growth of the rough sedge

grass, green as emerald. The spot was treeless and marked with broad

low hummocks of new sod.

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