He came to himself, panting and enraged, under a lamp, with a girl in his arms. Confronting him with a stone in his hand was Eutychus, petrified with amazement and apprehension. At one side, groaning and bent double with kicks and blows, was Silas. At the other, a silent, brown woman peered at the insensible girl. Up the street receded the sounds of riot. Marsyas permitted his angry gaze to fall from Eutychus' face to the stone the servitor held. The fingers unclosed and the missile dropped. Then Marsyas looked down at the girl in his arms. He drew in a full breath. The hill bird in the broken wilds of Judea whistled again; the incense from the blooming orchards breathed about him, and the flower face that had looked back at him from the howdah rested now, white and peaceful against his breast. Her long lashes lay on her cheeks, the pretty disorder of her yellow-brown curls was tossed over his arm. He was strangely untroubled for all that. The brown woman watched him from the gloom. Silas meanwhile had straightened himself and was gazing with stupefaction at the insensible face on the Essene's breast. "It--it--" he began, stammering before the rush of recognition and astonishment. "It is the alabarch's daughter--hither, fellow!" to Eutychus; "see this face! See whom thou wast pursuing." Eutychus looked and fell immediately into a panic. "I did not know her!" he cried. "By my soul, I did not know her! I was only visiting vengeance on the apostates, with the people! How should I expect to find her here!" Marsyas broke in on his avowal. "Do we go now to her father's house?" he asked of Silas. "Even now!" "Lead on, then. Eutychus! Follow!" Silas looked at the brown woman in the shadows, who beckoned and, turning, took roundabout and deserted passages toward the Jewish quarter, so that the extraordinary party proceeded unseen to the house of the alabarch. Once or twice, Eutychus attempted to press up beside Marsyas and excuse himself, but he was bidden to be silent. Then, on missing the charioteer's footfall, Marsyas turned to see him slipping away. Immediately Silas was despatched to bring him back; and so, placed between the two, he was dragged on to the house he had attempted to injure. Remembering Eleazar's statement concerning the breadth of the schism, Marsyas was prepared to discover the alabarch a Nazarene. "O Israel! after triumph over the oppression of the mighty, is this your overthrow?" he said bitterly to himself. Long before he reached the alabarch's house, the figure in his arms stirred and made a little questioning sound. But against her manifest wish, the promptings of his Essenic training and the admission that she had been overtaken among apostates, something in him locked his arms about her and brought a single word to his lips. The gentleness of his voice surprised him. "Peace," he said, and she lay still.