The Maccabee's face hardened more. But he shook his head.
"Fourteen years can change a woman from a beauty to–a–a Christian, ugly and old and cold," Julian augured.
The Maccabee turned his head away from his tormentor and Julian's laughter trailed off into a half-jocular groan.
"How much you harp on beauty!" the Maccabee said deliberately. "Are you then going to regret the actresses you left behind when I tore you from your exalted calling as the forelegs of the elephant in the theaters at Ephesus?"
Julian's face blackened. A foolhardy daring born of rage resolved him at that instant. He flung himself out from his saddle and raised his hand with a knife clenched in it. But the Maccabee with a composed laugh caught the hand and wrenching it about, dropped it, red and contracting with pain, at his companion's side.
"Tut! Julian, you are a bad combatant. If you must make way with a man," the Maccabee advised, "stab him in the back. It is sure–for you. Ha! Is this Emmaus we see?"
They had ridden up a slight eminence and below them was a disorder of fallen or decrepit Syrian huts in the hollow place in the hills.
It had been the history of Emmaus for centuries to be known. The feet of the Crucified One had pressed its ruined streets and His devoted chroniclers had not failed to set it down in their illuminated gospels. Army after army in endless procession had thundered through it since the first invader humbled the glory of Canaan, and few of the historians had forgotten to record the unimportant incident. Warfare had hurtled about it for centuries; the Roman army had come upon it and would continue to come. It had not the spirit to resist; it was not worthy of conquest. It simply stood in the path of events.
A single citizen appeared at the doorway of the most habitable house and looked absently over the heads of the new-comers. As they approached, the villager did not observe them. Instead, he looked at the near horizon lifted on the shoulder of the hills and meditated on the signs of the weather. It was Emmaus' habit to find strangers at its door.
Julian, with natural desire to be first on this perilous ground and away from the side of the man who had defeated him and laughed at him, rode up to the door. The villager, seeing the traveler stop, gazed at him.