Then with both hands clasped high above his head, he made the prison ring with the cry, "The kingdom is at hand! The kingdom is at hand! I shall soon be free!"
Not long after that, the castle blazed with the lights of another banquet. The faint aroma of wines, mingled with the heavy odor of countless flowers, could not penetrate the grim prison walls. Nor could the gay snatches of song and the revelry of the feast. No sound of applause reached the prisoner's ear, when the daughter of Herodias danced before the king.
Sitting in darkness while the birthday banqueters held high carnival, he heard the heavy tramp of soldiers' feet coming down the stairs to his dungeon. The great bolts shot back, the rusty hinges turned, and a lantern flickered its light in his face, as he stood up to receive his executioners.
A little while later his severed head was taken on a charger to the smiling dancing girl. She stifled a shriek when she saw it; but the wicked Herodias looked at it with a gleam of triumph in her treacherous black eyes.
When the lights were out, and the feasters gone, two men came in at the warden's bidding,—two men with heavy hearts, and voices that shook a little when they spoke to each other. They were Timeus and Benjamin. Silently they lifted the body of their beloved master, and carried it away for burial; and if a tear or two found an unaccustomed path down their bearded cheeks, no one knew it, under cover of the darkness.
So, out of the Black Castle of Macherus, out of the prison-house of a mortal body, the white-souled prophet of the wilderness went forth at last into liberty.
For him, the kingdom was indeed at hand.
Meanwhile in the upper country, Phineas was following his friend from village to village. He had dropped his old familiar form of address, so much was he impressed by the mysterious power he saw constantly displayed.