Some, who had slept and mercifully forgotten all, sat up in bewilderment, others leaped up, thinking the hour had come. As we stood blinking at the lights, Mehemet spoke a few words, and the soldiers flashed their torches into our faces until they lighted on mine. Then Mehemet stepped forward and laid his hand on my shoulder, and drew me toward him; and the soldiers closed about us. David sprang toward them. “You shall not take him alone!” he cried. “Let us go with him, every one of us. We shall go to death together.” And others sprang forward too, clamoring, beseeching. “Take us all!” they cried. “Take us together!” Mehemet shrugged his shoulders and turned away. The captives flung themselves before the soldiers, who hesitated. It was then that the old bishop, who had never ceased to mumble, I think, came quietly up to us. “It is all right. Let him go,” he said gently. “He will come to no harm.” [Illustration: A tall man with a black beard and a curved sword sheath that clanked on the stones. I recognized in him Mehemet the Turkish commander ] “It is my orders,” said Mehemet, looking with respect at Bishop Alfred. “I have come for him alone.” Half quieted by the bishop’s intervention, my fellow-prisoners ceased to offer forcible resistance. But they wept and prayed, and David grasped me by the hand. “We shall be together in spirit, Arnold!” he cried. “God be with you. God be with you.” He flung his arms about me, and the guards, touched by the scene, permitted him to accompany me as far as the door. They picked their way carefully by the light of their torches, to avoid treading on the dogs, which crept to their feet or strained, yelping, upon their chains. At the door I found Elizabeth. “We shall be with you in your hour, Arnold!” she said, embracing me and fighting back her sobs valiantly. “We shall all think of you tomorrow.” The crowd dispersed. The last thing that I saw was the white, terrified, maternal face of the little woman, as she clutched her children to her breast, and, over her, the bishop’s pastoral staff, held up as if to shield her. The door was closed behind me, and the soldiers shot the bolts home. In front of me was a flight of winding concrete stairs, dividing at a central space into two portions that ran right and left respectively. We took the left. I expected to emerge into the Vivisection Bureau, to see the eager students of the medical school, and Sanson, the presiding devil, there. But instead I saw a gate above me; a guard unlocked it. Then I found myself standing alone beside Mehemet, in the interior court between the Temple and the Airscouts’ Fortress, between the Science Wing and the Council Building. High above me the bridges crossed, spanning the gulf in whose recess we stood. I saw once more the palms against the upreared crystal walls.