An hour before dawn Cerealis at the head of his men, advanced over the causeway with swift silent tread, but failed to effect a surprise. Simon, if not John, was on the alert. Then began a battle similar in all respects to that of the preceding night. After eight hours of desperate fighting the Romans had not gained a foot of ground, and the battle ceased, as it were, by mutual consent. Now no more could the Romans boast that, man for man, they were superior to the Jews, when the picked soldiers of their army, the very flower of the legions, had suffered repulse at the hands of the Zealots. The iron warriors, who had carried their eagles triumphantly over all nations from the Euphrates to the Atlantic, leaned moodily upon their spears, and stared up with dark and sullen faces at the laughing Zealots, who, clustering upon the roof of the northern cloisters, pointed with their swords at the causeway and mockingly asked the foe why they did not come into the temple. “Give counsel what we shall do,” said Titus to Tiberius Alexander. “Raze Antonia to the ground, and with the materials fill up this intervening glen so as to make a broad level way, over which we may haul our engines to batter the northern cloisters.” Titus without delay adopted this suggestion. The Roman soldiers, burning to retrieve their tarnished honor, had no sooner received the new command than they flew with ardor to its execution. All along the sky-line, on every tower, turret and battlement, were seen groups of men furnished with lever and crow, by whose means blocks of masonry were lifted up to be sent whirling and crashing into the valley below; far into the night the soldiers toiled by the ruddy glare of a thousand torches, and as the mighty fortress sank lower and lower so did the débris accumulated in the valley rise higher and higher. The Zealots no longer mocked, but looked on in silent wonder at this display of almost superhuman energy. There was something sublime in this demolition of a magnificent citadel merely for the purpose of filling up a trench. At last a broad and level way was successfully carried across the ravine right up to the very foot of the northern cloisters. On the evening of the day that saw its completion Crispus, walking meditatively upon the crest of Olivet, came suddenly upon a figure standing solitary, silent, motionless. It was the woman who was steadfastly refusing to acknowledge herself as his wife, the Princess Berenice. Not far off, in the background, stood two attendants with a chariot. Evidently she had come to take a look, perhaps her last look, at her native city. Crispus had leisure to observe her, for she was so wrapped in contemplation that she did not hear his tread. Her face was pale, and anguish looked from her eyes as she surveyed the ruin wrought by man against his fellow-man. The country, swept of all its timber to supply materials for the Roman banks and for camp fires, had lost all its sylvan charm and beauty.