"A pest on an eye that only half sleeps!" Julian said to himself. "He hasn't lost count on the minutes since he left Cæsarea!"
The morning broke, the sun mounted, the deserted road became populous with all the previous day's host of pilgrims, and the silence in the hills failed before the procession that should not cease till night fell again. Through all the shouting at camel and mule, the talk of parties and the dogged trudging of lonely and uncompanionable solitaries, the Maccabee slept. From time to time Julian, who had wakened early, gazed with smoldering eyes at the insolent composure of his enemy sleeping. But slumber with so little control over the senses of a man was not to be depended upon for any work that demanded stealth. At times the gaze he bent upon the long lazy shape half buried in the raw-edged grass was malevolent with uneasiness and hate. Again, some one of the passing travelers that bore a resemblance to the expected Aquila would bring the Ephesian to his feet, only to sink back again with a muttered imprecation at his disappointment.
"A pest on the waxen-hearted satyr!" he said to himself finally. "Why should he have been more faithful to me than to his first employer! I am old enough to have learned by this time not to trust my success to any man but myself. Now where am I to look for him–Ephesus, Syene, Gaul, Medea? Jerusalem first! By Hecate, the fellow is handsome! And these Jewesses are impressionable!"
The rumination was broken off suddenly by a glimpse of an old deformed man bearing a burden on his shoulders, followed by a slender figure, jealously wrapped in a plebeian mantle that left only a hem of silver tissue under its border. They were skirting along the brow of the hill opposite, away from the rest of the pilgrims on the road. Both were walking slowly and the old man seemed to be examining the farther slope, as if meditating a halt. Julian got upon his feet and watched. He saw the old man sign to the girl presently and they moved down the farther side of the hill and were lost to view.
Julian cast a look at the sleeper and hesitated. Then he scanned the road; he might miss Aquila. He seemed to relinquish the intent that had risen in him, and sat down again.
After a while as his constant gaze at the passers-by led him again toward the overflowing well, he saw there, standing in a long line, awaiting turn to dip a vessel in the water, the old bowed servant, with a skin in his hand. The girl was nowhere to be seen.
Julian sprang to his feet and, hastening across the road, considerably below the well, climbed the hill in the direction in which he had seen the girl disappear.
That watchful alarm in the brain which, at moments of demand, is instantly alive in certain sleepers, aroused the Maccabee almost as soon as the stealthy, receding footsteps of Julian died away. He stirred, sat up and looked about him. Julian was nowhere to be seen. Both horses were feeding a little distance away. The Maccabee sprang up and looked toward the well. There patiently but apprehensively waiting was old Momus. The girl was not with him. Suspicion grew vivid in the Maccabee's brain. The tender rank grass about him showed the print of his cousin's steps as they led away toward the road. He followed intently. The slim marks of the well-shod feet led him across the dust of the road up into gravel on the slope and finally eluded him on the escarpment that soared away above him.
The Maccabee hurried to the top of the declivity to gain whatever aid that point of vantage might offer and from that height saw below him to the west a single nook shaped of rock and hummock and a tree out of which rose a blue thread of smoke. He dropped down the farther slope at a pace little short of a run.
He mounted the slight ridge that overlooked the depression in time to see Julian of Ephesus appear over the opposite side. Within, with her mantle laid off, her veil thrown back, the girl knelt over a bed of coals, baking one of the Maccabee's Milesian ducks. Julian had made a sound; the Maccabee had come silently. She looked up and saw the less kindly man first, flashed white with terror, sprang to her feet with a cry, and whirled to flee up the other side. There she confronted the Maccabee with hands extended to ward off the encroachment of his cousin. Without an instant's hesitation she flew into the Maccabee's arms. His clasp closed around her and she shrank against him, clinging to the folds of his tunic over his breast with hands that were tremulous.