“That, my dear Crispus, is the rival captain of the temple, Eleazar, son of the ex-high priest Ananias, whom you have already seen at Cæsarea. Betwixt father and son is open war. Ananias, suave and polite, courts the good graces of the Romans; Eleazar, sullen and fierce, boasts his hatred of us. He is said to be secretly leagued with Zealot banditti, and to have known more than he ought of the doings of Simon the Black. Indeed, Quintus is of opinion that the fugitive Zealot, with the connivance of Eleazar, is at the present moment hiding within the sanctuary. If so, he is secure from arrest, for Cæsar himself may not enter there. So deep a scorn hath this Eleazar for Romans that he refuses to return their salutations. Be thyself a witness.” The Levitical guard had by this time reached the place where the two Romans were standing. “Peace to you, Eleazar,” said Rufus, raising his hand in salute. But the Jewish captain marched past at the head of his guard, taking no notice whatever of the Roman. Rufus laughed with good-humored contempt. “What did I tell you?” said he to Crispus. “That was not well done, Eleazar,” he called out after the receding figure. “Johanan ben Zacchai makes it his boast[10] that he never yet let Gentile forestall him in giving the salaam.” Speaking thus, Rufus led the way to the eastern cloister, which, extending in an even line due north and south, formed the second side of the irregular square. “Now here we have a truly Titanic work,” he said. “When the temple was first planned by an ancient king called Solomon, he found the summit of the hill too small for his architectural ideas, so what did he do but rear a wall sheer up from the valley below till it was on a level with the top of the mount; the vacancy betwixt the wall and the mount was then filled in with earth and stone, and on the esplanade thus formed was built this grand colonnade, which we now see; hence its name, Solomon’s Colonnade. From the summit of yon pinnacle at the southeast corner the plumb-line falls a sheer descent of four hundred and fifty feet--at least so say the priests who have measured it. Cast your eye downward, and mark the depth!” As Crispus leaned far over the stone balustrade, and ran his eye first to the right and then to the left along the vast mass of masonry, rising vertically in mid-air, he muttered: “The gods themselves would not dare attack the temple from this side.” Far down, scarcely visible, glinted a slender line of water. “The brook Cedron,” said Rufus, “flowing to-day, dry in summer. The name Cedron, or Black, is justly deserved, for into the rivulet flows the black blood of the daily sacrifices conducted thither by channels bored through the solid rock.” “How name you yon fair hill in front of us?” “The Mount of Olives, so called from its trees. Come, view we now the third side.”