There was the even, musical ring of whetting armor as the column filed back through Hanaleel, and silence. The man in scarlet, who had sat on his ash-heap and smiled throughout the dispersing of the mob, a royal creature enthroned and entertained by the discomfiture of the mass, suddenly realized that the obscurity, which he had expected to lift, was the shadow of night. He arose and, dusting off his scarlet skirt, moved out into the road. At that moment, a figure moving nearer the wall passed him, walking swiftly. It was the Essene. "Ho! a discreet youth! a cautious youth!" the man in scarlet said to himself; "profiting by experience, he waited in safety somewhere until this light-fingered rabble was dispersed. That must be a fat purse, a fat purse! And I am looking for such!" He quickened his pace to overtake the young man and in his interest forgot the late riot. Suddenly the young Essene stopped as if he had been commanded. The man in scarlet brought up and looked. Before them was an immense trampled dusty ring. In the falling twilight, he saw several huddled shapes, in attitudes of suffering and sorrow, kneeling together in its center over something which was stretched on the sand. A strangling gasp attracted the older man's attention once more to the Essene. His figure seemed to shrink, his cheeks fell in. Swiftly about his lips crawled the gray pallor of one physically sick from shock to the senses. His eyes flared wide and the next instant he flew at the mourning cluster about the prostrate shape in the ring. One or two fell back under his hand, and he leaned over and looked. A cry, heartrending in its agony, broke from his lips. He dropped to his knees and fell forward with his face in the dust. A murmur of compassion arose from the little group around him, and the man in scarlet lifted his shoulders and turned his back on the blighting spectacle of the young man's anguish. He walked hurriedly out of the falling night on the Mount, through Hanaleel, into the lights and noise of the City of David. Soldiers on the point of closing the great gate paused to let him through. "Comrade," he said to one, "what did they out yonder?" "They stoned a Nazarene named Stephen," was the reply. [Illustration: "They stoned a Nazarene named Stephen"] CHAPTER IV THE BANKRUPT Somewhat subdued, the man in scarlet walked through the night in the City of David. After his first sensations he was discomfited. "Now this is what comes of the irregular barbarity in Judean executions," he ruminated. "In Rome this Nazarene would have been despatched in order and his body borne away to the puticuli and no opportunity given for that painful scene outside. Doubtless I should have convinced the young man and borrowed his gold of him, by this time. Certainly, Fortune is a haughty jade when once offended. But I shall be fortunate again; by all the gods, Jewish or Gentile, I will compel her smiles!