Julian halted.
"Shall we camp here?" he asked.
"It hath the recommendation of variety," the Maccabee said wearily.
"Eheu! How I shall miss the greensward of Ephesus! Yes, we'll camp!"
They dismounted and while Julian unpacked their blankets, the Maccabee
collected dead reeds and cedar twigs and built a fire. Then he
stretched himself by the sweet-smelling flame.
"She can not have kept up with our horses; indeed it is unlikely that
they moved far," he thought, and thus assured that there was no danger
to the girl for whom he had become a self-constituted guardian, he ate
a piece of bread, drank a cup of wine and fell asleep.
His slumber was not entirely unconscious. So long as the movements of
his cousin continued regular about him, he lay still, but once, when
Julian approached too near, his eyes opened full in the face of the
man about to lean over him. The Ephesian raised himself hastily and
the Maccabee's eyes closed again.
"A pest on an eye that only half sleeps!" Julian said to himself. "He
hasn't lost count on the minutes since he left Cæsarea!"
The morning broke, the sun mounted, the deserted road became populous
with all the previous day's host of pilgrims, and the silence in the
hills failed before the procession that should not cease till night
fell again. Through all the shouting at camel and mule, the talk of
parties and the dogged trudging of lonely and uncompanionable
solitaries, the Maccabee slept. From time to time Julian, who had
wakened early, gazed with smoldering eyes at the insolent composure of
his enemy sleeping. But slumber with so little control over the senses
of a man was not to be depended upon for any work that demanded
stealth. At times the gaze he bent upon the long lazy shape half
buried in the raw-edged grass was malevolent with uneasiness and hate.
Again, some one of the passing travelers that bore a resemblance to
the expected Aquila would bring the Ephesian to his feet, only to sink
back again with a muttered imprecation at his disappointment.
"A pest on the waxen-hearted satyr!" he said to himself finally. "Why
should he have been more faithful to me than to his first employer! I
am old enough to have learned by this time not to trust my success to
any man but myself. Now where am I to look for him--Ephesus, Syene,
Gaul, Medea? Jerusalem first! By Hecate, the fellow is handsome! And
these Jewesses are impressionable!"
The rumination was broken off suddenly by a glimpse of an old deformed
man bearing a burden on his shoulders, followed by a slender figure,
jealously wrapped in a plebeian mantle that left only a hem of silver
tissue under its border. They were skirting along the brow of the hill
opposite, away from the rest of the pilgrims on the road. Both were
walking slowly and the old man seemed to be examining the farther
slope, as if meditating a halt. Julian got upon his feet and watched.
He saw the old man sign to the girl presently and they moved down the
farther side of the hill and were lost to view.