“No, I don’t know Him.”
But someone evidently insisted that he was a disciple of Jesus, for even more loudly Peter repeated:
“But no and no, I don’t know whereof ye are speaking.”
Without looking around and smiling involuntarily Judas nodded his head affirmingly and murmured:
“Just so, Peter. Yield to none thy place at the side of Jesus.”
And he did not see how the terror-stricken Peter departed from the court in order not to be caught again. And from that evening until the very death of Jesus Judas never saw near Him any of His disciples: and in that multitude there were only these two, inseparable unto death, strangely bound together by fellow-suffering,—He who was betrayed unto mockery and torture and he who had betrayed Him. From one chalice of suffering they drank like brothers, the Betrayed and the the Traitor, and the fiery liquid seared alike the pure and the impure lips.
Gazing fixedly at the fire which beguiled the eye into a sensation of heat, holding over it his lanky and shivering hands, all tangled into a maze of arms and legs, trembling shadows and fitful light, the Iscariot groaned pitifully and hoarsely:
“How cold! My God, how cold!”
Thus in the night time, when the fisher folk have set out in their boats leaving ashore a smouldering campfire some strange denizen of the deep may come forth from the bowels of the sea and creeping to the fire gaze on it fixedly and wildly, stretching its limbs towards the flames and groan pitifully and hoarsely:
“How cold! Oh, my God, how cold!”