So, without relaxing from his fever of determination, Marsyas sped on toward Damascus.
He knew that the hour had come!
CHAPTER XXXVI
ON THE DAMASCUS ROAD
With the solid soil of the ancient Roman road beneath his horse's feet, Marsyas rode north, between the hills of Judea, with the head of Mt. Ephraim before him. The early morning of the second day broke over him, fresh on the long straight road, leading over the border into Samaria, past the Well of Jacob, and through the city of Samaria. At noon the third day he turned at the parting of the ways, and rode east, along the southern edge of the Plains of Esdraelon, until, through a crevice in the hills, he saw the Jordan sparkling in its valley below. It was an old familiar way, thence, north once more, fording a hundred mountain brooks that fed the river of the Holy Land. The narrow fertile strip that lay between the hills and waters of the Sea of Galilee, unto Tiberias, he accomplished after night. At dawn he entered Magdala, at mid-morning Capernaum, and, leaving the margin of the beautiful lake, he passed north into the rocks, ridges and forests once more. Through marshes and sedge, with the waters of the Jordan in the heart of it, he forded the south arm of Lake Huleh and entered Itrurea.
The country changed but the road did not. It was still the same compact ribbon of stone and soil in the marsh as it was in the hills, as it was in the fertile lowlands. Ahead of him, through the hills it stretched, through the oaks of Bashan, under cliffs surmounted by castles, or hillsides marked by temples. And when the oaks left off, and the hills fell back and the streams dried into dead, sapless beds watered only by infrequent rains, the road continued on.
The fifth dawn, he rode down a pass, through a rocky defile, and the Syrian desert was before him.
He had bought provisions for two days' journey at the last village in the fertile lands; his horse was freshened after a night's feeding on the herbage in the hills, and Marsyas' heart was resolute.
Even the road no longer led him on, but he touched his horse with his hand and passed into the wilderness.