Even as he said this the hangings which covered the noiseless outside door were parted suddenly. Joseph himself stood there with one hand raised above his head, and said unto them-- "Peace be unto you all in this household! Peace be unto you!" The words, spoken in the Teacher's deep and musical voice, rang out in the tented room like a trumpet. The three conspirators were struck by them as if by some terrible crushing physical force. With dilated eyes and faces, which were scarcely human in their terror, they crouched before the terrible apparition. In that moment all remembrance of what they had just learnt from the newspaper was blotted from their minds; they only thought that here was one veritably risen from the dead, or come in spirit to denounce them. The woman was the first to succumb. With a low, whimpering moan she fell in a tumbled heap upon the floor. Neither the Jew nor the younger man moved a finger to help her. They crouched trembling against the opposite wall, and stared at the tall figure of the man they had tried to murder. Joseph stood looking upon them. His face was no index whatever to his thoughts. In whatever spirit he had come they could define nothing of it from his face, though the words which he had uttered as he appeared from behind the hangings rang in their ears with a deep and ironical mockery as if the bell of doom was tolling for them. Once more Joseph raised his hands. "Peace be unto you," he said again, as if blessing them. And then he asked very gravely and calmly: "Why are you afraid of me?" Again there was silence, until at last Levison, the Jew, with a tremendous and heroic effort of self-control, pulled himself a little together and essayed to speak. "Do not prolong this scene, sir," he said, in a cracked, dry voice, which seemed to come from a vast distance. "Have your men in at once and take us away. It will be better so. You have won the game, and we must pay the penalty. I suppose you have captured the men who made the attempt upon your life, and"--here Levison remembered, with an added throb of horror, how another had suffered in place of his intended victim--"and who, unfortunately, killed another person in mistake for you. So be it. We are ready to go." The sound of the Jew's voice speaking thus, and calm with all the hideous calmness of defeat and utter despair, had roused Lord Ballina's sinking consciousness. As Levison concluded, the young man fell upon his knees and almost crawled to the feet of the Master. "It's all lies," he gasped--"it's all lies, sir! I don't know what he is talking about, with his murders and things. I know nothing whatever about it all. I wasn't in it. I assure you I'd nothing whatever to do with it. It was he who did it all." The livid young wretch extended a shaking hand of cowardly accusation, and pointed it at his whilom friend.