“Death—death! He is guilty!” came the deep-throated answer of the priests.
Cries of triumph, dreadful laughter, the sound of buffeting palms burst forth from judges and witnesses alike. Some one was tying a handkerchief over the face of the prisoner with the mocking words, “Behold the Prophet!”
“Prophesy unto us, thou Christ. Who is he that smote thee?” yelled the savage voice of the beggar who had received his sight; and he smote his blinded Saviour with open palms twice—thrice—many times.
A suffocating mist rolled blood-red before the eyes of Peter. “If he were the Messiah,” he groaned, “this could not be. The man hath mocked and deceived us from the beginning!”
Somewhere, not far away, sounded the cheerful crowing of a cock. “I will go [pg 143]back to Galilee,” he muttered. But his leaden feet carried him no farther from the awful scene than the porch. Here he loitered, listening with a frightful, strained attention to the sounds of ribaldry and laughter that came out to him through the half-open doors. “I will go,” he said aloud. “I must go. It is already day.”
The servants of the high priest’s household were astir and cheerfully busy with their morning tasks. One of them, a buxom maid bearing a jar upon her head, paused and stared attentively at the Galilean. “Aha!” she exclaimed. “This man also was with Jesus, the Nazarene.”
Peter raised his heavy eyes to the fresh-colored, inquisitive face of the woman. “I know not the man,” he snarled with an oath. The woman went [pg 144]her way with a laughing gesture of unbelief.
Then others of the bystanders began to cast curious glances at the haggard face and wild eyes of the stranger. They whispered among themselves for a space, then a man wearing the livery of the house of Annas advanced with an air of determination. “Certainly, thou art one of them,” he said authoritatively, “for thou art a Galilean.”
Peter turned upon the man with a torrent of angry oaths. “I tell thee, fellow,” he cried loudly, “that I know not this man of whom thou speakest.”
The cock crew for the second time.