But a strange spirit arose and grappled his soul within him. It said, “Wait! Kill now? Keep that for a joy to come. Nurse it, prize it, plan for it! Wait till he has reached the pinnacle of power and life is glorious and very precious to him! Strike now and lose the long joy of anticipation? Strike now and die? Do not be such a fool. Take your fill of life first. Have your will. Defy this Jehovah. Then kill, and die.” And again Obil went his way. On stormy galleys of the great sea, into mines of Spain, far north to strange icy coasts, into the whirling wickedness of Antioch, carousing from city to city in Egypt, but never more to the desert! His hand came to have no mercy. A heap of dead faces might stare at him beside their own charred threshold, and Obil could stand, jocund, eating grapes from the piteous vine. Often he had come back to look in secret upon the face he hated with supreme hate, wondering if he should strike now, and yet the strange hand of that mocking inner spirit held him back as at first. Those who in those swift visits had glimpses of the face of Obil did not forget. * * * * * And now it was April once more; the same sky, the same scents in the air; Hermon gleaming in his snows just as he did that first day when Obil came riding up from the sea alone with the song in his heart. Away in Damascus he had felt in his soul that the time was come. He had bought two wonderful blades of steel. One had power that would crush bones, the other was swift and sure and silent. By crooked ways, that day of the Lord’s Great Year in Galilee the four riders, after they left the sea, began trailing after one another among the sweet wild thickets of Carmel, brushing the dew from great flushing bowers of honeysuckle among the oaks, or skirting some little mossy dell where doves filled all the air with the mellow thunder of their blended calls. The others laughed and sang, but not Obil. At other times in that strong swim through the wild waste of waters he had thought, “Thus will I come when I have had my fill and am to take the last and best of the feast. More glad will I come than the waters of this full stream rushing to the sea! With deeper content than yonder doves in the sun!” But today--how strange it was! The waters seemed dumb. They had no message for him. Yet he was to take the last and best. He was to strike, and say, “This for my son, whose life you took!” But the old huge joy did not rush upon him now. There was only a weight of dull will instead. One of the three riding with Obil that day had secret letters from Spain to a nobleman in upper Cæsarea. Obil carried under his cuirass gold and gems sent from Rome by a slave to his master in Capernaum. Another had a debt of his own to pay, which he was coming home to settle hideously. He talked of it constantly, with boastings and glee. It was a woman. Thus and thus would he do--and then--would he never make an end of his story?