Several nights after the departure of Manasseh from Jerusalem, a strange thing occurred outside the temple wall. It was just beneath the towering angle of the southeast parapet that rises high above the valley of the Kidron. The night was dark, for there was no moon, and thick clouds veiled the stars. Two men, whose clothes, could they have been seen, would have indicated that they were common laboring folk, were feeling their way among the great blocks of stone that lay beyond the temple wall--a part of the débris of the ancient city which the enterprise of the new settlers had not yet removed. As now and then a temple guard passed along the wall above them, the men stood still, and could not have been distinguished from the huge stones around. As the guard withdrew, the men moved cautiously, like foxes stealing upon their prey. "It is here," whispered the foremost. "Lend a hand!" Strong arms tugged at something, which did not yield. "The club! I have it through the ring. Now, lift!" A slight grating sound followed, as if a heavy stone had been raised and slid upon another. "Faugh! what a stench! No doubt about our being on the scent. Give me the rope. I've tied it under my arms. If I can't breathe, you'll have to pull me out." One held the rope, while the other let himself down through an opening between the great stones. "It is all right!" came up from a vault below. "Double the rope on a stone, and slide down after me." The second man disappeared as noiselessly as a serpent gliding into its hole. "Breathe yourself a little until we get used to it, as a fox does when he goes to sleep with his head under his tail. * * * Now for it! It's as slippery as the side of Hermon. Mind your skull! I've just cracked mine." "Go ahead," replied the other; "I've played the worm in worse ground than this." The men groped their way, crouching for perhaps a hundred cubits, when the sewer--for such it was--led through the foundation of the temple wall, and enlarged into a sort of subterranean corridor. The fresher air and the echo of their shuffling feet revealed this. "Now for a lantern! A flash of lightning in here wouldn't be seen at the opening." A small lamp enclosed in two hemispheres of bronze was lighted from a tinder-box, and sent a gleam through a slit in one side. It revealed a passage about fifty cubits long, two or three wide, and perhaps twelve or fifteen high. "See this! This passage must have been built in Solomon's time, yet here are the workmen's marks on the stone in red paint. You can rub it off with the finger, though it has been here for five hundred years at least. One can well believe that the Phoenician empire is to last forever, when a Phoenician stonemason's marks last so long. You would think the lizards would have rubbed them out with their bellies." The corridor came abruptly to an end, but a small conduit opened at one side, out of which trickled a stream of blood and filth.