Dr. Caiaphas sat quiet and impassive. The uncomfortable feeling had been growing upon him ever since he left home that he was upon a grotesque fool's errand. The road over which they were now passing was heavy and sandy. The sun shone down upon it warmly, and, early as was the season, the fresh grass had begun to show itself in irregular patches of light and dark-green. The sky overhead was blue. In the sunshine it was warm, but those on the shady side of the coach drew their overcoats closer about them. Every now and then the hack would pass little groups or single figures, all plodding along in the direction of the camp. Sometimes there were larger groups of men and women and some children or half-grown girls. Some of the men carried their overcoats over one arm. One group which they passed consisted of three women, one man, and three children. One of the women--thin and frail-looking--carried a young baby, and the two other tired children dragged themselves along, holding each by a hand of another of the women. All these people were of the commoner sort. Some appeared to be working-men with their wives, others appeared not even to be laboring men, but of that great, underlying, nameless class that is still lower in the scale of social existence than the class of producers. Most of these people were evidently dressed in their best clothes, as though for a holiday. After riding for maybe a mile, the hack turned a bend in the road, and from the summit of a little sandy rise of ground the committee came within sudden sight of the camp. Every one of them was surprised at the extent of the encampment. As they looked down upon it, it stretched away like a great town of tents and huts. In some places the tents and frame sheds were clustered in a confused mass, in other places they were separated into streets and avenues. Upon the outskirts--the suburbs of this nondescript town--were everywhere clustering groups of carts and wagons and restless crowds of people which grew thicker and thicker in the camp, becoming here and there congested into restless, moving ganglia of humanity. These disconnected groups of people gathered most thickly along the banks of the stream, and far away in the distance was a greater crowd surrounding some central point of interest. The visitors surmised that John the Baptist was the centre of that crowd. Beyond the stream were a few scattered huts, and beyond that a level, green marsh. An inlet from the sea made in part a broken, sandy headland. Beyond that, in the distance, was a wide, sparkling stretch of water with the far, blue line of the farther shore. Above all was the windy arch of sky looking down peacefully and calmly upon the clustered, restless masses of human beings below. There was an indefinable odor of salt in the air, and the wind came across from over the marsh, fresh and cool.