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.