If the door had opened, I was prepared to dart upon him.
“Well,” said he, after a whispered expostulation from Septimius, “you must go and settle the matter with the Emperor. The fact is, that I am too tender-hearted to govern such a nation of dagger-bearers. So, to Nero! If we can not send the Emperor money, we will at least send him men.”
He laughed vehemently at the conception; ordered the singing and dancing slaves to return; called for wine, and plunged again into his favorite cup.
Septimius arose, and led me into another chamber. I remonstrated against the injustice of my seizure. He lamented it, but said that the orders from Rome were strict, and that I was denounced by some of the chiefs in Jerusalem as the head of the late insurrection and the projector of a new one. The procurator, he added, had been for some time anxious to get me into his power without raising a disturbance among my tribe; the treachery of my domestic had been employed to effect this, and “now,” concluded he, “my best wish for you—a wish prompted by motives of which you can form no conjecture—is that you may be sent to Rome. Every day that sees you in Cæsarea sees you in the utmost peril. At the first rumor of insurrection, your life will be the sacrifice.”
“But my family! What will be their feelings? Can I not at least acquaint them with my destination?”
“‘Let your guard come,’ cried I.”
Copyright, 1901, by Funk & Wagnalls Company, N. Y. and London.