"What now if they have already confessed?" said one woman. "We shall have put ourselves to this trouble for naught. Nay, but I believe that they have confessed."
"Mayhap," said her neighbor, "but I shall not give up the matter before noon, now that I am here. Verily," she added with a shrug, "I am glad now that I did not go over to their number; I came near it once when the man Peter preached in our street that their Messiah would come back and that right speedily. If what they tell about the Nazarene being alive were true, he would certainly come in these days." Then they fell to gossiping in neighborly fashion about their husbands, the linen that they had spun, and the preparations for the approaching feast-day, stopping suddenly to listen as a loud and ever growing murmur of sound arose from within the gates.
"They are coming!" cried the multitude as with one voice.
"They are coming!" said Ben Hesed, tightening his grasp on the strong bow upon which he was leaning. The little band of fourteen men had established themselves on a rocky eminence directly above the spot where the scourging was to take place, well screened from observation by a tangle of low-growing shrubs.
The procession, headed by a strong detachment of temple guards, soon came in sight, the prisoners heavily chained walking two by two. Behind them followed a number of Sanhedrists, among whom the women pointed out to one another the famous Saul of Tarsus, as second only in interest to the condemned prisoners.
"They do say," whispered one, "that he enters without ceremony into the houses wherein dwell them that believe on the Nazarene, and that he drags them forth to prison and to death without mercy."
"That is true," returned her neighbor. "I chanced to be in the house of Mary when he came there--for as thou knowest, she was a kind soul, whatever her sins, and ready always to lend from her store for the convenience of them that lacked--indeed one might say as much of them all."
"And how didst thou escape?"
"I simply repeated what the man bade me, without ado; but I had like to have fainted. How I reached my home afterward I scarce know; my husband hath forbidden me to speak with any of them hereafter--though God knows the command was needless. But see! They are about to bind them to the posts for the scourging." At the next breath the speaker screamed aloud in terror, grasping her neighbor by the arm. A swift something had smitten the man who was advancing to lay hold on Mary of Nazareth, and with a wild yell of agony he leapt high into the air, falling stone dead at his victim's feet.
Before the startled multitude had time to recover themselves, a very whirlwind of destruction, savage, swift, merciless, had swept down upon them from the rocky eminence above their heads, the wild battle-cry of the desert sounding in their guilty ears like the trumpet call of the last day. And the people fled from before it in a frenzy of mad fear, running, stumbling, falling, the strong trampling the weak under foot, amid a wild tumult of shrieks, curses and entreaties to God to spare them.