Then the Master looks into his very face, and remembers him as the Roman knight he had seen in the Porch of Solomon. The half thousand disciples on Kurn Hattin prostrate themselves to the earth; and in their acclaim the soldier joins his voice, "Rabboni! Rabboni! Our great Master!" Then departs the Christ, and back to their homes they go, evermore to comfort themselves with the vision of their risen Lord. Soon afterward their Rabboni goes from earth. Out beyond the hill of Olivet he walks one day with his eleven. In their last words together he reminds them again that they are to be his heralds to the eastern world. A cloud gathers above their heads, like some halting chariot, and he is gone forever from human sight. Yet only in the distance it seems a cloud. For John afterward says to Quintus that it was in reality a phalanx of ten thousand angels, robed in whiteness and sent to convoy the Son of God to glory everlasting. With Quintus that visit to Kurn Hattin shaped all his future. His Master's countenance had seemed to him more wonderful than any face which the gifted Phidias had ever carved in stone. But never in after days could he worthily tell to Lucretia the vision he had seen. Only in one poor sentence could he sum it up: "I have seen for myself the risen and ascending Lord." VI CHRIST'S WITNESSES AT ROME "A great multitude."--_Tacitus_. With jubilation Quintus sees again the shores of Italy rise over the Adriatic, and finds himself once more in his beloved Rome. The center of magnificence and power it seems. Alter clamorous public greetings in the Forum, there comes another welcome which happens only in a returning soldier's life. In the palace of Marcus the kindred of Quintus are gathered, and Lucretia also is in the circle, to hear his great adventure. "How wonderful it seems," the knight begins: "so many times have your faces come to me in my dreams, but now I am fully awake and see them once again. Hail to you all! When I was sailing away from Brundisium, the augur foretold for me an unusual experience. In the Jewish life beyond the Sea I have learned much, if that were the fulfillment. But, most of all, I have come back with a new religious faith. In Judaea, as you must have heard, a certain Galilaean has called himself the Son of the one true God. He has spoken of a future life for men; and he has now risen from the grave, after his torture on a cross, to prove his doctrine true. I now believe in him, as the interpreter of the future life. Forevermore he is my High Priest, and not the great pontifex in the temple of your Jupiter." Brave words they are. There in the great hall of Marcus, with the sunlight shining on the gorgeous palaces of the Caesars, the Temple of Apollo, and all else which crowns the Palatine, the noble Quintus confesses his new belief. Come what will the consequences!