"Where hast thou been," Laodice asked, "so long?"
"Was it long," he demanded impulsively, "to you?"
"New places, new faces, uncertainty and other things make time seem
long," she explained hastily.
"Nay, then," he said, "I have been busy. I have been attending to that
labor I had in mind for Judea, of which we spoke in the hills that
morning."
Laodice drew in a quick breath. Then some one, if not herself or the
husband who had denied her, was at work for Judea.
"There is no nation, here, for a king," he went on. "It is a great
horde that needs organization. It wants a leader. I am ambitious and
Judea will be the prize to the ablest man. Seest thou mine intent?"
"You--you aspire--" she began and halted, suddenly impressed with the
complication his announcement had effected.
"Go on," he said.
"You would take Judea?"
"I would."
"But it belongs of descent to the Maccabees!"
"To Philadelphus Maccabaeus, yes; but what is he doing?"
She dropped her head.
"Nothing," she said in a half-whisper.
"No? But let me tell you what I have done already. Three days ago
Titus took revenge upon Coenopolis for her sortie against Nicanor by
firing the suburbs. The citizens could not spare water to fight the
fire, and after futile attempts they gathered up food and treasure and
fled into Jerusalem. Now, a thousand householders in the streets of
this oppressed city, with their gods and their goods in their arms,
made the pillagers of Simon and John laugh aloud. They fell upon these
wandering, bewildered, treasure-laden people and robbed them as
readily and as joyously as a husbandman gathers olives in a fat year.
Oh, it was a merry time for the men of Simon and the men of John! But
I in my wanderings over the city came upon a party of Bezethans,
reluctant to surrender their goods for the asking, and they were
fighting with right good will a body of Idumeans twice their number.
In fact they fought so well, so unanimously, so silently that I saw
they lacked the essential part of the fight--the shouting. That I
supplied. And when they had whipped the Idumeans and had a chance for
flight before reinforcements came, they obeyed my voice in so far as
they followed me into a subterranean chamber beneath a burned ruin on
Zion.
"We were not followed and our hiding-place was not discovered. In
fact, their resistance was a complete success. Whereupon, they were
ready to unite and take Jerusalem! No--it was not strange! It is the
nature of men. I never saw a wine-merchant in Ephesus, who, after
clearing his shop of brawlers single-handed, was not ready thereupon
to march upon Rome and besiege Cæsar on the Palatine! So it was with
these Bezethans.