All the terraced garden below the outer walls had been cut to the roots. Palm and cactus and hedge and olive trees had gone to build the huge hurdles on which the idle battering rams stood suspended in mid-air. Just once the page paused and swayed as he followed the king going up to Antonia Tower. ’Twas where the Romans had torn down the first and second walls of the Holy City. On the angle of a projecting bastion on the inner third wall, where those on the parapet above could see, swung the rotting skeletons of five hundred Jews crucified hanging by their spiked hands. Their loose garments blew to the wind and the ravens still circled above the featureless blackening skulls. Where the battering rams rested motionless above the parapets, bags filled with sand and dripping inky pitch showed how the besieged had fought back by firing the hurdles and engines of war. Rumor ran through the Roman camp how an old blind follower of Herod the Great, let down by ropes to work he could not see, had fired and burned the first hurdles. But for the creaking of the ravens perched on the turrets of the towers and fighting over the black skulls, the silence was of an awfulness that was stabbed by every footfall. Once or twice the page saw gaunt figures on the wall top appear like phantoms and toss naked dead over to the burning moats below; and down in the burning moats could be seen ghoulish figures of the Roman Army searching the dead for coin to buy slaves in victory. A quick catch of breath broke from the page. King Agrippa looked sharply back but did not pause. Javelins, darts, broken arrows, bent spears, crumpled shields littered the dust where gardens had once terraced the hills. The ground was hot beneath the page’s sandals as though seethed in flame. By the Tower of Antonio in front of the Temple, trickles of red clotted blood black with flies ran out under the demolished walls. [Illustration: Map of Jerusalem] Then, they had vaulted the clutter of crumbled stones in the lowest story of Antonia’s Tower where its east wall joined the Temple. Where the broken wall was plugged by plank and bag, a cohort of Romans stood guard silent as stone. The King raised his right hand. The old Idumean came forward so swathed in sheet of mail and leggings of chain greaves he could scarce be recognized but for the stiffness of his aged legs. In his right hand, he carried a long sword, in his left the short circular dirk such as the Sicarii Sword Ruffians inside bore. Not a word was uttered. The old soldier, disguised as Zealot, moved forward and pulled some bagging from the hole in the wall. Head first, then right leg, he stepped through the hole. With frantic look of appeal as a dumb brute going to its doom might cast in affectionate farewell to a loved master, the page glanced back at the pale face of King Agrippa. Then, he followed the disguised soldier through the hole in the wall and the Romans stuffed the bagging and plank back in place.