"What of Stephen?" he asked with stiffened lips. "How did it come to pass?"
For a moment there was silence, and then the rabbi drew up and shook himself.
"It will not help thee, young brother," he said, with an impatience which was only fortification against feeling. "It is ill enough to take a blasphemer and deliver him up to punishment; ask no more, for it wrenches me to think of it."
Marsyas stood frozen; he did not want to hear more, after the rabbi had spoken, but when the reviving current of life stirred in his veins, it was turned to a fever for vengeance. Now! Not to wait for safety, or for circumstances or for men or things. It seemed that he should not eat or sleep till his work was done.
Eleazar, seeking to turn the current of the young man's thoughts, which he believed, being unable to see his face, must be sorrowfully retrospective, asked presently:
"Art thou here with—them?"
"With whom?"
"The Nazarenes."
Marsyas seized the rabbi's shoulder with a fresh grasp.
"Where are they?" he demanded.