Eleazar doubled his huge hand and whirled his head away. There was tense silence for a moment.
"Is there a specific transgression discovered?" Saul demanded.
The Levite weighed his answer before he gave it.
"Rumor hath it," he began, "that certain of the sect are in the city preaching—"
"Rumor!" Saul exclaimed. "Hast rested on the testimony of rumor?"
"Can ye track pestilence?" he asked craftily.
"By the sick!" was the retort. "Go on!"
"It is the High Priest's vow to attack it," Joel declared. "He hath no other thought. It is said that one of the disputants, who yesterday troubled them in the Cilician synagogue with an alien doctrine, preached the Nazarene's heresy."
"In the Cilician—in mine own synagogue!" Saul repeated, in amazement.
"In thine, in the Libertine, the Cyrenian and the Alexandrian."