“Three hundred years after Dinocrates passed away, Ephesus had become a Christian city, you see.... Again many years pass. Ephesus now belongs to Rome, the mistress of the world. And the temple still stands. Then Rome grows weak, and a barbarous nation, the Goths, attack her possessions. You shall see how they treated one of the Seven Wonders of the World nearly three hundred years after St. Paul was in Ephesus. Look once more.”
Under the blue sky, in ruins, scattered far and wide, with here and there a column or a fragment of wall standing, lay the mighty temple. All about and around it swarmed wild-looking men, clothed in uncouth garments, with long hair and many of them with red beards. They were seeking for gold and silver among the ruins, fighting among themselves like wild beasts for the treasures of the once beautiful temple they had destroyed. Just for a second the children saw them. Then they, too, were gone.
“One more glimpse, and the story is told,” said Mr. Sheston’s quiet voice.
The mist that had gathered dissolved once again. There was the blue sky, there the sea—though it looked further away than in the days when Ephesus was great. But where was Ephesus now? Not a trace of the city remained. Where once it had stood, the children saw in the distance the few low scattered houses of a small village. Not a trace, not even the ruins of the great temple of Diana could they see. Instead, mounds of earth, great pits and long cuttings in the soil, where workmen were digging, was all that stretched in front of them.
“This is Ephesus as it looks to-day,” Mr. Sheston was saying.
He pointed to the group of small flat-roofed houses in the distance.
“That Turkish village covers the proud city where St. Paul walked, and where, in the open-air theatre, the people shouted Great is Diana of the Ephesians! The mouth of the river now choked with mud has pushed back the sea. Here in front of you, where the temple stood, men of to-day are digging to find fragments of its pillars and pavements to send to the British Museum.”
As he spoke the last word, the scene wavered before the eyes of the children, and through it came the glimmering shape of the schoolroom window. In another second they sat closed in by four walls, and the clock on the mantelpiece pointed to half-past three.
“Why—why—it was half-past three when you came in,” stammered Rachel. “The clock must have stopped.”
“I think not,” said Mr. Sheston, smiling quietly. “We shall have plenty of time for the Museum—if you still want to go.”