As the breeze wavered, the voices rose and fell with a weird and plaintive effect, and Crispus thrilled as he listened. There was, to his way of thinking, a sob in every cadence--“How long, O Lord, how long?”--a wild appeal to heaven for vengeance against their present oppressor, the Roman. A spirit of profound melancholy fell upon Crispus as he contemplated the character of this strange Eastern nation. In his journey that day every face seen by him, every incident that had happened, gave proof that though Jew and Roman touched each other at a hundred points, they were nevertheless as far apart as if seas rolled between them. While all other nations of the empire, including even Greece, so renowned in arts, arms, and learning, were content to live peaceably, nay happily under the shadow of the eagle-wings of Rome, the Jew maintained an attitude of sullen hostility to his conqueror. How long was this antagonism to last? Was the Jew to remain forever a thorn in the side of the empire, or must the solution of the problem come, as Rufus was convinced it would, in the shape of an exterminating war? Next morning at sunrise the march was resumed. The road, that had hitherto followed a line parallel with the coast, now turned inland, and leaving the maritime plain behind them, the Romans began to ascend the picturesque ravines that wind towards the rocky tableland upon which Jerusalem is built. Gophna, another military station, fifteen miles distant from the holy city, was their second stopping-place. At daybreak they began the third and final stage of their journey, along a road dazzlingly white and dusty. At the ninth hour of the morning the cohort was toiling through an upland ravine. In front of them at some distance was a numerous body of wood-bearing pilgrims. Suddenly, as their van gained the highest point of the road, a thrilling shout broke from it, followed by a precipitate hurrying forward on the part of all of those in the rear. “Yerûshalaïm! Yerûshalaïm!” was the cry that rang out on the morning air, the cry of the Jews. “Hagiopolis! Hagiopolis!” exclaimed the Greek proselytes. “Hierosolyma!” said Rufus quietly. Impelled by a natural curiosity, Crispus pressed forward his steed, and, as he gained the northern height of Scopus, the whole city at one flash burst full upon his view. He drew rein, and, with a lively interest, gazed upon the famous city--“_longe clarissima urbium Orientis_”--whose origin was lost far back in the night of antiquity, a city gray with age ere ever a stone of Rome was laid!