"I am here, Rabbi," Marsyas replied, "but alone."
Eleazar looked at him, but the examination under the difficulty of the gloom was not satisfactory; besides, there was the stir of others who had come in behind him and were able to listen. Marsyas swept the fibula into one of the coin-baskets and passed a handful of silver to the rabbi.
"Meet me without at the end of the first watch to-night," the rabbi added, as he thanked Marsyas. "Do not fear me, for I am also a victim of thine enemy."
Marsyas saluted him, and the rabbi disappeared. A figure in armor stepped up to the place where Eleazar had stood. He was helmeted and greaved and had a line of purple about the hem of his short tunic. He applied for a loan and yielded as indorsement the favor of Cæsar and the family name of Aulus. Marsyas withdrew hastily into the overhanging shadow of the grating, received the officer's note, counted out the gold and drew in a free breath when another stepped into his place. It was Vitellius' legionary.
"Am I run to earth?" Marsyas asked himself.
At the end of the first watch that night he prepared to follow Eleazar's suggestion, if only to discover what to expect. That he was not filled with confidence nor resigned to suffer what might befall him was evident by his slipping a knife into his belt when he made himself ready.
He went out into the unlighted street and looked about him for Eleazar. The tall figure of the rabbi emerged from the darkness a moment after Marsyas appeared and approached the young man.
"Have no fear," the rabbi said. "We are common victims of the same unjust suspicion; let us not be suspicious of each other."
"Thy words are fair, Rabbi, but I do not know thee. Whom I most trusted hath failed me of late; it must follow then that I am not sure of strangers. Tell me first thy business with me."
"I am Eleazar, the rabbi, who sat with Saul in the college that day when Joel, the Levite, came with news of Stephen of Galilee."