Heedless of the fact that they were discovered the Jews poured down the steps of the gateway and raced across the court towards the wooden synagogue, from whose roof Titus had directed his operations against the Sanctuary. They ran amid a blaze of light cast by torches, the object of the Jews being evidently to fire the synagogue in the hope of burning such of the enemy as lay sleeping within. They failed in their purpose, however. Both from the nearer synagogue itself and from the more distant cloisters, the Romans poured forth with clanging buckler and flashing broadsword; a desperate hand-to-hand combat took place, lasting for a brief space only, inasmuch as the Zealots, seeing the number of their foes increasing moment by moment, turned tail and fled, pursued by the shouting, triumphant legionaries. [Illustration: Moved by a Divine impulse] Crispus and Rufus, who had taken an active part in the fray, joined also in the pursuit. Suddenly, while Rufus ran on, Crispus stopped, attracted by the sight of a flaming torch dropped probably by a flying Zealot. Moved by some unaccountable prompting he picked it up, and as he did so he caught sight of something above that sent a strange thrill through him; all unconsciously he had checked his footsteps beneath the golden window of the room Gazith, that judgment-hall in which the Saviour of the world had received His sentence of condemnation at the mouth of the Sanhedrim. Something light and cool stirred the hair of Crispus; it was a faint wind coming from the north, the very direction required to carry the flames throughout the building! Let others regard these things as mere coincidences; to Crispus they were signs that the hour, long predestined, had come. “Marcus,” said he, stopping one of his own soldiers who was running past at that moment, “lift me up to yon window.” Without a word the man clasping his tribune’s ankles, reared him aloft, and set his feet upon his own shoulders. For a moment Crispus hesitated; then, as the historian of the event testifies, “MOVED BY A DIVINE IMPULSE,” he thrust the flambeau through the golden lattices, and, having effectively kindled the woodwork of the interior, sprang to the ground again. So little time had he taken that it was doubtful whether any other Roman besides Marcus had witnessed his act; certain it was that none of the Zealots suspected that there was kindling a fire whose flames were destined to sweep the temple from end to end. Crispus glanced at the gate from which the Zealots had issued but a few minutes previously; having retreated to it they were now endeavoring with might and main to stay the entering of the Romans. He turned his eyes again to the golden window, and laughed to see that the light within was increasing in brightness; the whole room must soon be in a blaze, and the hall that had once reverberated with the unjust cry, “He is guilty of death,” would be the first of the temple-chambers to perish.