“We are men unaccustomed to the use of arms. And if we take up the struggle with the Roman soldiers we shall all be slain. Besides didst thou not bring only two swords? What can be done with two swords?”
“We can get others. And we might take them away from the soldiers,” said Judas with a show of impatience, and even Thomas, the serious, smiled through his shaggy beard.
“Judas, Judas! What thoughts be these? And where didst thou procure these swords? For they resemble the swords of the Roman soldiers.”
“I stole them. I might have stolen more, but I heard voices and fled.”
Thomas answered reproachfully and sadly:
“There again thou didst wrong. Why stealest thou, Judas?”
“But nothing is another’s property.”
“Good, but the warriors may be questioned to-morrow ‘Where are your swords?’ and not finding them they may suffer punishment innocently.”
And later, after the death of Jesus, the disciples remembered these words of Judas and concluded that he had purposed to destroy them together with their Teacher by luring them into an unequal and fatal combat. And once more they cursed the hateful name of Judas of Kerioth, the Traitor.
And Judas, after such conversation, sought out the women in his anger and complained to them tearfully. And the women heard him eagerly. There was in his love to Jesus something feminine and tender and it brought him nearer to the women, making him simple, intelligible and even good-looking in their eyes, though there still remained a certain air of superiority in his attitude towards them.