He had done his duty nobly. All were in admiration of the assault. The Romans had been fully prepared. He scaled the rampart, and scaled it in their teeth. His men followed gallantly. He pressed on; the second rampart was stormed. I had found him at the foot of the third, checked by its impregnable mass, but defying the whole garrison to drive him back. When I afterward saw the strength of those bulwarks, I felt that with such a leader at the head of troops animated by his spirit, there was nothing extravagant in the boldest hope of war. This was an eventful night, and there was still much to be done before we slept. I threw over my tattered garments one of the many mantles that lay loose round the chamber, flung another on the body of the procurator, and sallied forth to give the final orders of the night. The prisoners had been already secured, and I found the great hall of the palace crowded with centurions. The interview was whimsical; for a while I escaped recognition; the gashed faces and torn raiment of my hunters, which bore the marks of our dreary march through the subterranean; the rough heads and hands stained with the fight, a startling contrast to the perfect equipment of the Roman under all circumstances, gave them the look of the robber tribes. My disguise was in the contrary way, yet complete. The cloak was accidentally one of the most showy in the procurator’s wardrobe. I found myself enveloped in furs and tissues; and their Arab acquaintance was forgotten in what seemed to them the legitimate monarch of the mountains. [Sidenote: Salathiel Meets the Captain] I was received by the circle of captives with the decent dignity of the brave. There was but one exception, which I might have guessed—the tribune. He was all humiliation, stooped to make some abject request about his baubles, and was probably on the point of apologizing for his ever having taken up the trade of war, when I turned on my heel and shook hands with my old friend the captain. He looked in evident perplexity. At last, through even the grim evidences of the night’s work on my countenance, and the problem of my pompous mantle, his brightening eye began to recognize me, and he burst out with: “The Arab, by Jupiter!” But when I asked him what had become of his baggage, I touched a tender string, and, with a countenance as grave as if he had sustained an irreparable calamity, he told me that his whole traveling cellar was in the hands of my men, and it was his full belief that he was at that moment not worth a flask in the wide world! The tribune turned away in conscious disgrace, and I sent him to a dungeon to meditate till morn on the awkwardness of insolence to strangers. With the others, I sat down to such entertainment as a sacked fortress could supply, but which hunger, thirst, and fatigue rendered worth all the banquets of the idle. The old captain cheered his soul and grew rhetorical.