Just then my guard, who had entered the room, commanded me to come down from the window, threatening to transfix me with his javelin if I did not obey. I descended and seated myself quietly on the stool, listening in silence to the progress of the fight. Knowing the irresistible power of the Roman arms, and wondering why the Son of the Desert had been led into such a hopeless enterprise, I was grieved, although not disappointed, when I distinguished by the varying sounds of the conflict, that the disciplined cavalry of Pilate’s legion were masters of the field. The torchlight faded away; the tumult ceased. Nothing was heard but a solitary horseman patrolling the deserted streets. The enterprise, whatever it was, had failed. I was not to be rescued. I was not to rejoin my sisters. I was to know nothing that was going on in the busy world around me. I sank upon my straw, dispirited, despairing. Toward daylight I slept; and I dreamed of that terrible night by the Dead Sea and of the words of my uncle Beltrezzor. It seems that the riot made my jailers suspect that my prison was insecure. A few nights after this grand excitement, I was startled by several men in masks entering my room. I was bound, muzzled and blindfolded again. I was placed in some kind of a vehicle. We traversed the city; we passed the gate; we descended a slope. The fresh air of the country broke sweetly and soothingly upon me. We ascended a long hill, as I knew by the motion to which I was subjected. No one spoke. At last the vehicle stopped. I was led between two men into a house. We walked through a very narrow passage where only two could pass at a time. Suddenly I was stopped, seized by the arms, and let down into a kind of vault. Previous to this I was stripped of my bandages; but it was so dark that I could distinguish nothing. It was not deliverance. It was not death, that happiest deliverance of all! It was a change of prisons—from dark to darker. My heart sank within me. I trembled. Strange sounds above me at the point of my entrance now attracted my attention! I listened with the utmost tension of ear, endeavoring to conjecture what my jailers were doing. At last I comprehended it! They were bringing brick and mortar, and all in the dark! They were walling up the space by which I had been lowered into the vault. Horrible idea! My former prison was a dungeon; this was a grave! I was to be buried alive! The thought overpowered me and I swooned. [Illustration: Ornament] [Illustration: Ornament] XXIV. _BURIED ALIVE._ [Illustration: Initial]