Not for a moment, however, could they stay the progress of the work. The Roman guard stationed in front of the banks drove back every onset; and at last the Jews, despairing of accomplishing their object, kept within their walls, and sallied forth no more. Each embankment, when finished, presented a vertical front to the city, but the other side was inclined at a very low angle, in order to facilitate the mounting of the military engines: and gaps were purposely left in it to permit the passage of the battering-rams and the movable towers. * * * * * The shrill réveille pealed through the Roman camp, rousing the legionaries from their slumber. Every man on waking turned his eyes towards the tent of Titus, and every face gleamed with a grim satisfaction at sight of the scarlet mantle hoisted above it, the sign that the day was to be one of battle. As the Roman host gazed upon the holy city rising fair and stately in the golden light of an Eastern dawn, they were fain to confess that it was a city worth fighting for. From its walls the tocsin of war was sounding in the shape of a six-foot brazen gong, whose deep, sullen tone reverberated monotonously on the morning air. The whole northern rampart was alive with a multitude of Zealot warriors moving to and fro, their shining armor obscured at times by faint columns of blue smoke. The Romans knew well what that smoke meant. Behind those battlements burned fires, over which were slung cauldrons hissing with scalding water, boiling pitch, and molten lead! At sight of this smoke the Romans merely smiled; but at sight of the military engines, disposed at due intervals along the wall, they burned with secret rage, being reminded of their tarnished honor, for these engines represented a triumph over Romans, having been captured, some from the camp of Cestius, and others from the Tower of Antonia and the Prætorium of Florus. Moving everywhere along the ramparts, now giving an order here, and now a caution there, was seen the form of that brawny Titan, Simon the Black, the very soul of battle, hatred of the Roman looking out from his wild, dark eye. Over his armor he wore a wolfskin mantle with the shaggy side turned outwards, a mantle that suggested to his followers the prophecy (for he came of the “little” tribe), “Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf.” Even those among the Romans that were most given to the despising of Hebrew valor, were obliged to admit that in Simon they had a warrior worthy of their steel. It was a lovely morning, giving promise of a sultry noontide; a dazzling sun shone from a sky of deepest blue; far away on the horizon hung a pall of pearly white mist. As a hush precedes the desert sandstorm, so upon the two armies there lay a strange stillness.