Drawing his blade the first ruffian pulled aside the woman’s robe and pierced her breast with the point of the weapon, an act followed by a faint moan, and a slight writhing of the figure. “Thou hast lost thy bet, Malchus,” laughed the first ruffian. “She’s living.” “She’s dead now, at any rate,” answered the second; and, furious at losing the wager, he drew his sword and stabbed the woman to the heart. At this a dying man beside her spoke in hollow tones. “In the name of God be merciful, and do the like by me. Thrust me through that my anguish may have an end.” “Thou wishest to die? Then thou shalt live,” replied Malchus; and, sheathing his blade, he moved off with the rest of the Zealots, who laughed as though the affair were a merry jest. When silence had descended upon the square again Vashti crept fearfully forth, and, after hesitating whether or not to return home, she resumed her slow and trembling way to Ophel, and arrived without further adventure at the house of Johanan ben Zacchai. It was a humble dwelling situated in a street that, like all others in the city, was as quiet as the tomb. Vashti found the gate, as she expected, barred. Before knocking she listened, and detected coming from within a sound that caused her heart to leap with hope, for it was a sound like that produced when corn is ground between two millstones. Even in her dazed and frightened state of mind Vashti could not but think it imprudent to be grinding corn within hearing of the street, a street that might be traversed at any moment by ruffianly, food-seeking Zealots. The household of Johanan were evidently not without grain; surely they would spare her just a little from their store? She knocked at the gate, and the sound of the grinding, if such it were, instantly ceased. “They think I am a Zealot,” she said with a wild little laugh. She knocked a second and a third time, but received no reply; she called out her name so loudly that those within must have heard who the visitor was, but they made no response. A dead silence prevailed within. Vashti withdrew to the middle of the street, and turned her despairing eyes towards the lattice over the gateway. No friendly face looked down at her; no face at all. She turned sorrowfully away, but came again presently, and this she continued to do at intervals, beating piteously upon the gate, but all to no purpose. Then did hope die within her. If Johanan ben Zacchai would not listen to the voice of a suppliant, there was none other in the city that would. Nothing remained for her but to return home; but how could she, empty-handed, face the despairing gaze of her dying mother, the fearful, famishing eyes of little Arad, who quite expected to see his sister come back laden with food. Loth to return home she wandered slowly and aimlessly through the streets and squares of the star-lit city.