The whistle had its effect, and in a space of time which would have suggested to any one who had thought of it that the police arrangements for guarding the distinguished company which had ventured into these dark places were more complete than that company itself had any idea of, several uniformed constables came hurrying into the court.
The crowd of slum-dwellers melted away as a small piece of ice in the sun, and, save that the doors and low windows of the surrounding houses were now thronged with interested faces, the group in the middle of the place was free of interruption.
Three stalwart constables lifted up the body and bore it away. Joseph and the rest of his friends filed in a horror-struck procession.
The Teacher's head was bowed. His thin, white hands were clasped in front of him, and the tears were rolling down his cheeks.
Hampson was at his side, and as he looked up at his old comrade once more he was thrilled to the very marrow, even as he had been thrilled on that strange eventful afternoon when the two great beams of wood had fallen from on high and struck down Joseph Bethune in the form of a cross.
For what Hampson now saw in his quick, imaginative brain, accustomed as it was to constant artistic images of the past, when Jesus walked in Jerusalem, was now the tall, bowed figure of the Saviour with wrists bound in front of Him, moving towards the shameful death which was to save and regenerate mankind.
Another scene in the Via Dolorosa!
It was now the middle of the afternoon. With magic celerity, even in that poverty-stricken district, carriages were found, and an ambulance brought from an adjacent police-station.
Then, through the crowded streets of the East, the long and busy thoroughfares of Fleet Street and the Strand, into the wide and spacious district where the rich dwell, the sad procession took its way.
And of all the crowds of busy humans that moved and ran about their business, no one suspected what these vehicles might mean. They passed through the busiest centres of the Modern Babylon without an indication or word of the true import of their passage.