“I am the last of my race,” said Cestius, answering the question expressed by the other’s eyes. “There is no son to carry on my name.” “Say not that Crispus is dead!” gasped Polemo, whose look of grief could not have been keener if he, and not Cestius, had been the father. “Crispus dead! Then my plan for the humiliation of--Oh, it cannot be! How? When?” “You shall learn. ’Tis the time for it,” said the Legate with a glance at a clepsydra that stood on the table before him. “The time?” repeated Polemo wonderingly. “Every night at this hour I strengthen my spirit in its purpose of vengeance by hearing anew from the mouth of an eye-witness the story of a massacre wrought by the lying oath of a cowardly priest.” Even as he spoke the curtain draping the entrance of the tent was lifted, and there entered two spearmen leading between them a captive whose dress and physiognomy bore unmistakable evidence of his Jewish origin. “A deserter from the city. Now, fellow, tell thy tale.” Frequent repetition had made the captive fluent in his narration, so with an unfaltering voice and in a simple style he gave a full account of the calamitous ending to the brave defense of the Prætorium. “Art certain that Eleazar’s was a fatal stab?” asked Polemo. “It could not have been otherwise; he dealt stroke upon stroke,” replied the Jew, who saw no reason why he should not heighten the story of Eleazar’s cruelty. Lives there a man who can relate an event exactly as it happened? “Woe to Eleazar!” said Cestius. “’Twere better for him had he never been born.” “What became of the bodies of those that were massacred?” asked Polemo. “They were taken outside the city to a place called Aceldama, where it is the custom to bury strangers. A trench was dug, and the corpses were flung into it, one upon another.” “You saw the body of Crispus treated thus?” And the man stating, not what had happened, but what he fancied had happened, answered in the affirmative. “Flung into a common grave! Lost to me forever!” murmured Cestius. “I am denied even the melancholy consolation of taking home his ashes.” * * * * * With the morning light the Roman army, having breakfasted, prepared to resume its march. At the first shrill sound of the trumpet the tents fell flat to the ground; at the second, which followed at a measured interval, they were piled with other baggage upon wagons and beasts of burden; at the third signal the march began, the vanguard filing off in stately order, eight abreast. Soon the whole of the vast army was in motion, winding like a glittering, scaly serpent up the mountain pass that led towards Jerusalem. Mounted scouts pushed on ahead for the purpose of forestalling those ambuscades which are the delight of an Oriental people.