At midnight there was a sudden rattling of the well-chain in the square by the Bethlehem gate—then a challenge from the startled Philistine sentry—a rush of soldiers along the stony street. But the three seasoned warriors slipped easily through the camp of the half-awakened army. They turned and doubled through the familiar maze of narrow, winding streets until they came to the steep terraces at the south of the town, where they dropped out of sight among the perplexing shadows of the olive orchards, through which they made their way swiftly back to the wild steppe-land and the mountain fastness where the band kept watch over their sleeping chief. Mighty men they were, these three, and it is no wonder that their exploit became one of the favorite tales of Hebrew history. But when they offered David the water for which he had longed, there came a lump into his throat and he said, “I can’t take it. My thoughtless wish might have cost too much. It would be like drinking my brave men’s blood, to drink that for which they have endangered their lives. It is too precious to drink. I will pour it out on the ground—so—as an offering to Jehovah.” Surely the God of Battles esteemed that simple libation as holy a thing as holocausts of bullocks and rams, and forgave many of the sins of those rough, hard outlaws because of the loving devotion they showed toward one whom He had chosen to be the deliverer of Israel. * * * * * An old legend says that after the mystic Star had guided the Wise Men to the Saviour’s cradle, it fell from heaven and quenched its divine fire in “David’s Well.” And surely, if the Star had fallen, it could have found no more fitting resting place than the Well by the Gate, whose water had been won by such unselfish adventure and dedicated with such tender gratitude. [Illustration: _THE NIGHT OF NIGHTS_] VI THE NIGHT OF NIGHTS In the short twilight of the winter evening a husband and wife are trudging wearily along the road which winds past the high gray walls of Jerusalem—no longer Jerusalem the proud capital of the dynasty of David, but a mere provincial town of the mighty Roman Empire, whose streets are dizzy with the shouting of a dozen languages and thronged with crowds of Greeks, Romans, Persians, Armenians, Ethiopians, and travelers from even more distant lands, who rub shoulders carelessly with the fanatical Pharisees and intriguing Sadducees whose mutual bickerings make them a laughing-stock to their Gentile masters; while there sits upon the throne of David a half-breed underling Edomite, through whose diseased veins flow the cruelty and lust and cowardice and treachery of turgid streams of unspeakable ancestry—Herod, called in grim jest, “the Great.”