"Stay, friend. I should not have spoken thus to one who had done me a kindness," said Saul. "Grant me thy pardon, and tell me, I beseech thee, what thou canst of this affair--if thou wast witness to it. God knows that it was untimely; another hour might have seen four penitent ones restored to the fold of Israel."
"Thinkest thou so, Pharisee?" said the other carelessly. "Now for myself I think otherwise. Another hour would have seen four corpses yonder, where now we see but one. The affair was timely enough for the Nazarenes."
"Thy name, man?"
"My name, Pharisee, is Festus; I am a free-born Roman, resident of Jerusalem yonder for a score of years back, but answerable to no man for my beliefs or practices. If it pleaseth me to believe on a crucified man instead of on Jove or Jehovah, thou canst neither scourge nor stone me for it. And now, most courteous rabbi, let me advise thee to return with all haste into Jerusalem, and in future to moderate thy zeal, lest thou come to an untimely end." With which bit of advice, received by Saul in contemptuous silence, the man strode away toward Jerusalem.
Left to himself the baffled Pharisee examined the ground carefully, pausing at length to question several peasants who had left their work in the neighboring fields to gather at the scene of the disaster.
"Didst thou see which way the knaves fled?" he asked of one.
The man looked at him stupidly. "They be fled along the road yonder," he said, pointing with his finger to the highway.
"Which way, north or south?"
"They went that way, master," said the peasant, pointing toward the north, which was indeed the opposite direction from that which Ben Hesed and his company had taken.
"He asked me which way the knaves were fled," said the man to his companions, as they stood staring after the departing figure of Saul. "Assuredly the knaves who came out to look upon the death of the just went that way, since it took them back to Jerusalem. As for the Nazarenes and those that saved them this day, God be with them, I did not look to see which way they fled. Jehovah grant them a swift journey and a safe abiding-place from the hand of that pestilent Pharisee."