While he spoke thus he was leading her onwards over the rough, stone-hewn floor, where the damp gathered in little pools. Following the windings of the cave they turned once, then again and yet again, so that soon Miriam was utterly bewildered and could not have found her way back to the entrance for her life’s sake. Moreover, the air had become so hot and stifling that she could scarcely breathe. “It will be better presently,” said Ithiel, noticing her distress, as he drew her limping after him into what seemed to be a natural crevice of rock hardly large enough to allow the passage of his body. Along this crevice they scrambled for eight or ten paces, to find themselves suddenly in a tunnel lined with masonry, and so large that they could stand upright. “Once it was a watercourse,” explained Ithiel, “that filled the great tank, but now it has been dry for centuries.” Down this darksome shaft hobbled Miriam, till presently it ended in a wall, or what seemed to be a wall—for when Ithiel pressed upon a stone it turned. Beyond it the tunnel continued for twenty or thirty paces, leading them at length into a vast chamber with arched roof and cemented sides and bottom, which in some bygone age had been a water-tank. Here lights were burning, and even a charcoal fire, at which a brother was engaged in cooking. Also the air was pure and sweet, doubtless because of the winding water-channels that ran upwards. Nor did the place lack inhabitants, for there, seated in groups round the tapers, or watching the cooking over the charcoal fire, were forty or fifty men, still clad, for the most part, in the robes of the Essenes. “Brethren,” cried Ithiel, in answer to the challenge of one who was set to watch the entry, “I bring back to you her whom we lost a while ago, the lady Miriam.” They heard, and seizing the tapers, ran forward. “It is she!” they cried, “our queen and none other, and with her Nehushta the Libyan! Welcome, welcome, a thousand times, dear lady!” Miriam greeted them one and all, and before these greetings were finished they brought her food to eat, rough but wholesome, also good wine and sweet water. Then while she ate she heard all their story. It seemed that more than a year ago the Romans, marching on Jericho, had fallen upon their village and put a number of them to death, seizing others as slaves. Thereon the remnant fled to Jerusalem, where many more perished, for, being peaceable folk, all the factions robbed and slew them. Seeing, at last, that to live at large in the city would be to doom themselves to extinction, and yet not daring to leave it, they sought a refuge in this underground place, of which, as it chanced, one of their brethren had the secret. This he had inherited from his father, so that it was known to no other living man.