"Why dost thou fetch this man into Jerusalem?" asked Ben Hesed of the bearers.
"To be healed," they answered him. "Happy shall we be if we get him there alive; already this is the third day since we started with him, and death pursueth after us faster than we can journey."
Ben Hesed marvelled at their answer, but he forbore to question them further, for he saw that they had no mind to talk. Presently he came upon a woman sitting by the wayside and weeping bitterly.
"Why dost thou weep, woman?" he asked of her, for he was not of those who reckoned it a defilement to speak to a woman.
"I weep," she answered him, "because, although I am in sight of the Holy City, I can go no further and my child must, after all, perish."
She thrust out her feet from beneath her robe, and Ben Hesed saw that they were horribly bruised, cut and blistered, as if she had walked a long way. As for the child, it lay waxen-faced and silent in her arms, the purple eyelids half dropped over the dull eyes. Ben Hesed shook his head gravely as he looked at it; it seemed to him that it was beyond help.
"Thou shalt ride upon my beast," he said, "and thus reach the city speedily. I will walk beside thee."
The woman smiled through her tears. "Now may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob bless thee!" she cried; then she looked down at her babe, and her face whitened. "It may be too late," she murmured.
"From whence hast thou come?" asked Ben Hesed gently.
"From beyond Jordan, in the hill country. I heard of what was being done in Jerusalem, and so when my babe sickened I rose up with him and hastened to come hither, but the sickness hath increased by the way. I fear----"