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.