On their surface floated an acquiescence to the tacit offer of his own. Then he nodded, and Mary turned and gathered the jewels from the cloth of byssus where they lay.
“I tell you he is the Messiah!” It was the angry disputant shouting at the little man.
“Who is? What are you talking about?”
Though the hubbub had ceased, throughout the hall were the mutterings of dogs disturbed.
“Jeshua,” the disputant answered; “Jeshua the Nazarene.”
A Pharisee, very vexed, his bonnet tottering, gnashed back: “The Messiah [pg 51]will uphold the law; this Nazarene attacks it.”
A Scribe interrupted: “Many things are to distinguish his advent. The light of the sun will be increased a hundredfold, the orchards will bear fruit a thousand times more abundantly. Death will be forgotten, joy will be universal, Elijah will return.”
“But he has!”
Antipas started. The Scribe trembled with rage. But the throng had caught the name of Elijah, and knew to whom the disputant referred—a man in tattered furs whom a few hours before they had seen dragged away by a negro naked to the waist, and some one shouted:
“Iohanan is Elijah.”