“I carry with me a sealed letter,” continued Rufus, “addressed to King Agrippa, who is at Jerusalem. He is, as you know, the brother of the Princess Berenice, the nominator of the high priest, and the supreme guardian of the temple treasures. The purport of the letter I know not, but if I may judge from Florus’ sinister smile as he handed me the missive, it contains some command which Agrippa will be loth to execute. Should the Jews of Jerusalem support the king in his attitude, it may prove the beginning of an outbreak whose end no man can foresee. I may be wrong, Crispus, but I have a presentiment that in this letter we are carrying the fate of Judæa.” Crispus frowned. He loved fighting, but it seemed to him there would be little honor and glory gained in reducing to submission a people goaded to war by the deliberate oppression of an unjust governor. The road traversed by the Romans wound southwards through the flower-enameled meads that constitute the Plain of Sharon, never more lovely than when seen in the soft sunshine of a May morning. Now and again in their march the Romans would pass a gayly-clad group of Jewish country-folk, many of them accompanied by asses and mules, laden with timber. “Pilgrims bound for Jerusalem,” explained Rufus in answer to Crispus’ inquiries. “Within a few days comes the Festival of the Xylophoria, or the Wood-offering, when the Jews are accustomed to bring to the temple supplies of timber sufficient to keep the sacrificial fires going for a year.” At a wayside spring a somewhat numerous caravan had made a brief halt to refill their water-skins, and to refresh their beasts of burden. The air was lively with the sound of timbrels, of songs, and of dances. The approach of the clanging cohort, with its swinging martial stride, put a sudden stop to the mirth. “The Romans! the Romans!” was the cry. Silent of tongue, but with eyes that looked unmistakable hatred, the pilgrims drew aside to let the legionaries pass. One fierce-looking Jew, bolder than his fellows, cried aloud: “To Gehenna with all Gentiles!” Rufus rode past with a smile of contempt. “Yon fellow knows full well,” said he, “that if I choose, I can hang him to the nearest tree, and yet the knowledge of that fact cannot keep him from expressing his hatred of the Romans.” “What is the Gehenna to which he would consign us?” asked Crispus, who was not so well versed in Hebrew matters as Rufus. “The Jewish Tartarus, a place of flame and torment, to which you and I, no matter how virtuous our life, are destined to be sent, according to the saying of the rabbis, ‘The Gentiles are only so much fuel for Gehenna.’” “They don’t love us, these Jews,” laughed Crispus.