The gates of Jerusalem were now closed by day as well as by night. Watchers patrolled without the walls, so that not a goat approached without being scrutinized, "lest," said a Greek wag, "his horns should prove to be the head-piece of another Alexander, the great Macedonian, who wore such horns for his crest." The only inhabitants permitted free access and egress at the city gates were the women who went daily to the brook Kedron, bearing loads of clothing which they hastily washed in the running water, with faces made white as the linen by the stories their fright invented. At any moment this terrible Judas might leap upon them out of the hills or the heavens. A group of these women were one morning at the Siloam pool. Among them was one of well-bronzed face, and short black hair which sprayed out beneath the close folding of her soiled kerchief. This woman was accompanied by a child who sat upon the brink of the brook, that his feet might feel the brush of cool water as it flowed by. She untied a hamper of garments which she had carried upon her head, and, tying up her skirts above her knees, waded into the stream. Like the others, she dipped the pieces altogether into the water, pounded them one by one with a short wooden club, then wrung each garment into a tight little bundle, and flung it upon the bank. Suddenly a cry arose among the women. A cloud of dust appeared upon the old road leading from Bethany. All gathered their laundered work, and hastily climbed the steep ascent to the southern gate of the city. "Is it Judas?" asked the boy. "Can we get in before he catches us?" "If we hurry," replied the woman. "Come." "I wish it were Judas," said another, pausing in the shadow of the tower above the gate. "Since these Greek fashions have come there is nothing but wash, wash. The new Princess has enough white linen to cover the peak of Hermon as the snows do, and enough coloured garments to make her like a sunset." "Is she beautiful?" asked the strange washerwoman. "So the men say, but----" "But? Go on." "Why, you yourself, girl, would be fairer than the Princess if you had one of her jewels in your hair. And as for her figure, no one sees her except as she lies like a painted statue in the palanquin. She may have a turtle's back and duck's legs, for all she arches her neck like a swan." The clamour of the washerwomen sufficed without further watchword with the sentry at the gate, who opened to them the "needle's eye" or small door. Once within the city they could not be induced to venture out again for the day, though assured that the imagined Judas was only a Greek courier riding from the direction of Jericho, who brought tidings that no enemy was to be seen for a distance of twenty stadia in any direction. Passing the cellar-like tunnel beneath the city wall the laundresses scattered, each in her own way, through the streets.