"Well for them that they do not," growled Knud the Bear. "I am no hired gladiator. I am a free Saxon. What sayest thou, O jarl?"
"Nothing," said Ulric, striding forward. "Let us see what this crowd meaneth."
"We have naught to do with them," said Sigurd, "but I am curious to have a look at the people of the land. None of them can say to himself that we came out of the sea on the other side of Carmel."
Every Saxon was as Sigurd in willing to see the people and to know what this might mean, for there were very many in the highway, men and women and children, and there were no horsemen, nor did there seem to be so much as a spear or a shield among them.
[CHAPTER XXI.]
The Rabbi from Nazareth.
Lysias, the Greek, stood in a copse of thick bushes near the forest border and looked out upon the plain, but not toward Gilboa. He had been digging in the earth, as Ulric and Ben Ezra had digged in the cave, but he had not been hiding treasure. He had but wrapped his weapons and his armor in a woolen robe-cloth that he might conceal such perilous evidence from inquiring officials of Rome or of any local authority. Earth and flat stones and sods were over them now, and he had made marks upon trees whereby he might find that place again if he should at any future day will to do so. He now walked out beyond the bushes with no trace upon him that he had been a warrior.
"Well was it for me," he said, "that I found such goodly raiment among the spoils of the trireme. Fewer questions are asked of him who is handsomely appareled. Soon I will procure me a beast and I will go with all speed to Jerusalem. It is a city to which strangers come from all the world, and he who escapeth into a multitude hideth himself in a solitude."
The tunic which he wore was of silk and his robe was of embroidered linen. Sandals were on his feet and his white turban was of a costly silken fabric. If he had retained any weapon, it was now perfectly concealed. To the eye of one who might chance to meet him he would suggest beauty and riches and peace, and not at all an archer whose bow had sent many messengers of death.