“Even so.”
“My father knew such a man, whom he called ‘silver-tongued.’”
“This man is as eloquent as Apollos.”
“We met such an one, and were with him for a time. We left him here, on our journey from Acre to Bozrah.”
“Did you penetrate his secret?”
“I did not, though my father once said to him ‘Grail.’ After that he kept aloof from us.”
“A proof it must be as I’ve suspected; the Hospitaler is one of the new Grail-Knights!” exclaimed Cornelius.
“And he is here? I must hear him again. The words he spoke to me in Gethsemane have followed me night and day since. He made the journey of Mary and Christ, by way of Kedron, to the cross, seem like a present reality; a path typical of the one before every child of God. I saw it all then, but have been unable since to find it. Oh, I burn with desire to have the ‘silver-tongued’ guide me to that pathway again.”
At the appointed time the twain sought the house of Christian Phebe, and found it wrapped in gloom; the only sign of life without being a man garbed as a camel driver, standing guard at the door. Cornelius whispered to Miriamne, “He’s a knight—the warden.” The young man gave the watchman a secret signal; the latter communicated through a little gated window, with those within, and quickly the door swung open, admitting Woelfkin and his companion. Within were light and cheerfulness contrasting with the gloom without. A goodly company was already assembled, chiefly made up of Crusaders, but now unharnessed. The faces of the pilgrim soldiers betokened a change within. They betokened spirits subdued, but not crushed; hearts having surrendered ambition for devastating conquest, to welcome a finer hope. There were few things about the place suggestive of war, and many suggestive of peace. At one end of the room stood a desk, in shape much like an altar. It was draped with a Templar banner, and to its side were fastened a sword, bent in the shape of a sickle, and two spears forming a cross, supporting a cup; the latter was in form the same as the cup of the Passion.
“There is something about this place that recalls the chapel of the Palestineans, in London, Cornelius.”