Eleazar's face had grown inexpressibly sad during Marsyas' words. His heavily-shaded eyes turned absently away from the speaker. He seemed to see beyond the invincible walls and towers of the Holy City, even beyond the olive-orchards and the meeting of the earth and sky, into the time which would come out of the east. Perhaps he saw waste and desolate places, lands of destruction and captives of the mighty, dregs of the cup of trembling and dregs of the cup of fury and the hostility of all nations. The sadness in his eyes became fixed. "Verily," he said, as if speaking of his own visions, "thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel!" Marsyas heard him with a stir of emotion in his soul. He put out his hand to the rabbi. "If I and my like be wrong, thou shall prevail, when the day of the just man comes, in the Lord's time!" "He called us His chosen people," Eleazar continued, suffering Marsyas to take his hand unnoticed, "even the appointed people, the marked people! Marked for His own purposes, how hidden! But what knows the clay of the potter's intent that passes it through fire? Chastening or vengeance, woe, woe unto them, by whom it cometh!" He turned away, and Marsyas looked after him until the narrow winding streets had obscured him. Quickly then Marsyas continued toward the Gennath Gate; reared to the Essenic habit of traveling without preparation, he was ready to journey from city to city in the dress he wore on the streets. He went by the cenotaph of Mariamne, past Phasaelus, past the Praetorium, out of the gate, past the might of Hippicus, and on to the parting of the road, where he took the way to Damascus. Presently he met a horseman and, stopping the traveler, bought without parley the beast, and mounted it. He knew that Saul would proceed by the slow mule, and the forbidden, nobler animal, the horse, would soon make up the distance the Pharisee had gained. So, without relaxing from his fever of determination, Marsyas sped on toward Damascus. He knew that the hour had come! CHAPTER XXXVI ON THE DAMASCUS ROAD