"And I shall see to it that he hears it," replied Eliezar.
XLV
THE TRIAL
The morning after this conversation the two prisoners were summoned. The court was held in the open portico of the gymnasium on Ophel. Captain Dion and his companion were brought there, their arms still bound. Judas had been pacing the portico, absorbed with his own thoughts.
"The prisoners, sir," said their custodian.
Judas sat down upon a fallen statue of Hermes, near it a rusted discus. Slowly he raised his head, as if loath to so much as look upon one taken in such shame as that of Captain Dion. He glanced first into the face of the older prisoner. In spite of his unkempt condition this man was imposing. His erect attitude belied his wrinkles as a token of age. The blood from an undressed wound still clotted his brow, but this could not hide the rare nobility of his features.
Judas studied the man a long time in silence. He seemed fascinated by the stranger's appearance. If what the Greek orators had on this very spot declaimed were true, that a goodly physical endowment is the outweaving of goodness of soul, Judas' decision had been an instant discharge of the prisoner.
He turned to Dion. Before his eyes rested upon the Captain, Judas forced a look of severity, knitting his features into hardness. As when a soldier puts a chain corselet over his breast, so Judas had evidently determined to guard his sense of strict and merciless justice against any temptation that might come from his former liking for the culprit. The muscles of his face were set like linked steel.