"Thou forgettest, however, Ben-Levi"--replied Abel-Shittim--"that the Roman Pompey, who is now impiously beseiging the City of the Most High, has no assurity that we apply not the lambs thus purchased for the altar to the sustenance of the body, rather than of the spirit." "Now by the five corners of my beard"--shouted the Pharisee, who belonged to the sect called The Dashers (that little knot of saints whose manner of _dashing_ and lacerating the feet against the pavement was long a thorn and a reproach to less zealous devotees--a stumbling block to less gifted perambulators)--"by the five corners of that beard which as a priest I am forbidden to shave!--have we lived to see the day when a blaspheming and idolatrous upstart of Rome shall accuse us of appropriating to the appetites of the flesh the most holy and consecrated elements? Have we lived to see the day when"---- "Let us not question the motives of the Philistine"--interrupted Abel-Shittim--"for to-day we profit for the first time by his avarice or by his generosity. But rather let us hurry to the ramparts, lest offerings should be wanting for that altar whose fire the rains of Heaven cannot extinguish--and whose pillars of smoke no tempest can turn aside." * * * * * That part of the city to which our worthy Gizbarim now hastened, and which bore the name of its architect King David, was esteemed the most strongly fortified district of Jerusalem--being situated upon the steep and lofty hill of Zion. Here a broad, deep, circumvallatory trench--hewn from the solid rock--was defended by a wall of great strength erected upon its inner edge. This wall was adorned, at regular interspaces, by square towers of white marble--the lowest sixty--the highest one hundred and twenty cubits in height. But in the vicinity of the gate of Benjamin the wall arose by no means immediately from the margin of the fosse. On the contrary, between the level of the ditch and the basement of the rampart, sprang up a perpendicular cliff of two hundred and fifty cubits--forming part of the precipitous Mount Moriah. So that when Simeon and his associates arrived on the summit of the tower called Adoni-Bezek--the loftiest of all the turrets around about Jerusalem, and the usual place of conference with the beseiging army--they looked down upon the camp of the enemy from an eminence excelling, by many feet, that of the Pyramid of Cheops, and, by several, that of the Temple of Belus. * * * * * "Verily"--sighed the Pharisee, as he peered dizzily over the precipice--"the uncircumcised are as the sands by the sea shore--as the locusts in the wilderness! The valley of The King hath become the valley of Adommin." "And yet"--added Ben-Levi--"thou canst not point me out a Philistine--no, not one--from Aleph to Tau--from the wilderness to the battlements--who seemeth any bigger than the letter Jod!"