"Are ye sincere in your boast that ye will not defend yourselves?" Marsyas demanded.
"What need, young brother? God defends us."
"Well enough; but what of the persecutor?"
"God will overtake him."
"When? When he hath desolated Israel, stained the holy judgment hall with tortured perjury, slandered the Jews before the world as slayers of the innocent? Your talk is all of the life hereafter; I, too, expect to live again; yet I am here to come and go at God's will, not Saul's! Even ye, in all your infatuation, will not call Saul's work God's work! I will not be driven and desolated by Abaddon!"
He did not wait for the preacher, who seemed prepared to speak.
"I was the friend of Stephen, of whom ye spoke with love to-night. Saul consented unto his death in spite of my prayers for him, and before I could save him. When I rebuked Saul for his bloody zeal he denounced me as an apostate and set the Shoterim upon me so that I am obliged to flee for my life. For mine own wrongs I do not care, but the blood of Stephen cries out to me, the spectacle of his death rises to me in my dreams, and the infamy of it fills my hours with anguish. Ye say he was one of your saints, a martyr in the name of your Prophet, a teacher and a power in your church. Ye claim that ye loved him. Yet ye make timid preparation to flee before the oppressor who brought him low, and lift no hand to avenge his death! Are ye men? Have ye loves and hearts? Do ye miss him—"
The pilgrim pressed his palms together and looked at the young man with passionate grief in his eyes. Marsyas turned his words to him.
"Was ever his touch laid upon you, warm with life and tender with good will? Did ever his eyes bless you with their light? Can ye take it idly that his hands grasp the dust and the tomb hath hidden his smile?"
The pilgrim covered his face with his hands.