Naomi leaned on her father's arm, and they slowly descended the steep and narrow street that led from the eminence on which the prison stood. From that situation they had an extended view of the lower city, now clearly visible in the moonlight, and looking so calm and so beautiful, that it was difficult to believe how much of vice and misery and crime was lurking amid the silent streets beneath them. The sight of a vast assemblage of human habitations without the sounds of human life has always something in it that is melancholy, and Naomi especially felt it so on this occasion, when her own spirits depressed and exhausted by the effort which she had made to sustain them during her trying interview with Theophilus. The city of Zion seemed sunk in sleep; and she thought with sadness how profoundly her inhabitants were also buried in the sleep of sin and false security, and how, by their impiety and hardness of heart, and by the oppression and murder of the innocent they were daily filling up the measure of their guilt, and provoking their long-suffering God to bring upon them the fierceness of his threatened wrath. Her father did not interrupt her reflections, for he sympathised in her feelings at parting with Theophilus; and his own mind was occupied with sad thoughts also, though they differed greatly from those of his daughter, and were unmixed with the holy consolations and triumphant hopes that cheered her while she contemplated her cousin's approaching fate. The silence was broken suddenly and fearfully. The wild deep voice of the son of Ananus made Naomi start, and a sensation of terror ran through her frame as she saw his unearthly form approaching with his usual rapid strides, and heard his yet more unearthly cry, "Woe, woe to the city! woe to Jerusalem!" She shrunk back, and would have drawn her father into the shade of a deep archway by which they were passing; but the mysterious prophet had fixed his glaring eye upon them, and came directly towards the spot where they stood. "Woe to thee, Zadok, thou son of Aaron!" he cried. "Woe to all thine house! and woe to thee also gentle maid of Zion. Thy star shall set--but it shall rise again." He turned away, and would have passed on, but Zadok caught him by his loose and tattered garment, and addressed him in a voice of kindness: "Come home with me, thou son of Ananus; and let me give thee clothes and food. You utter unceasing woes against our city and our families; but I will return thy curses with blessings, for it pains my heart to behold a fellow creature so desolate and so miserable. Hunger and fatigue have made you mad. Come home with me, and cease to terrify the women and children, and scare away their sleep by night with such doleful sounds."