By sunset, the Maccabee and Julian of Ephesus had taken the road to
Jerusalem again.
As they reached the crest of a series of ridges there lay before them
a long gentle slope smooth and dun-colored as some soft pelt, dropping
down into a tender vale with levels of purple vapor hanging over it.
At the end of this declivity, leagues in length, was a faint blue
shape, cloudlike and almost merged with the cold color of the eastern
horizon, but suddenly developing at its summit a delicate white peak.
The sunset reaching it as they rode changed the point to a pinnacle of
ruby before their eyes. Their shadows that had ridden before them
merged with the shade over the world. Then with a soft, whispery,
ghost-like intaking of the breath, a quantity of sand on the straight
road before them got up under their horses' feet and moved away to
another spot and dropped again with a peppering sound and was dead
moveless earth again. The little breath of wind from under the edge of
the sky had fallen.
In the silence between the muffled beat of hooves the Maccabee heard
at his ears the quick lively throb of a busy pump. With it went the
firm rush of a subdued stream. He was hearing his own heart-beat, his
own life flowing through his veins. Since nature in him had hurried
him out of the synagogue after its own desire, he seemed to have
become primitive, conscious of the human creature in him. Now, though
he rode through a bewitching air through an enchanted land, he did not
ride in a dream. All his being was alert and sagacious. Though the
confusion of footprints in the dust showed plainly where men had
passed by thousands, he did not follow their lead. Over the tangle of
marks lay a slim paw-printed, confident, careless trail of a jackal,
following the scent to a well. The Maccabee was obedient to the
instinct of the animal instead of the reason of man. At the end of
that trail, surer than Ariadne's scarlet thread in the labyrinth, he
knew that thirst had taken the girl in the dress of silver tissue. So
as he rode along this faultless highway that fared level and
undeviating by arches, causeways and bridges across mountains, over
black marshes and profound valleys, he kept his eyes on the jackal's
trail.
Long after moonrise they came to a spot in the road where the human
marks passed on, by hundreds, by other hundreds deserted the road and
clambered up the side of the hill. Over this deviation the jackal had
trotted. The Maccabee, tall on his horse, raised his fine head and
searched all the brooding shapes of the hills about.
The road at this point ran through a defile. On either side the slopes
crowded upon the pass. Above them were bold summits with groves of
cedars, and in one of these the Maccabee made out a thin curl of smoke
dimly illuminated by a moon-drowned fire. Up there in the covert of
the trees the girl in the silver tissue was resting from her perilous
and outlawed journey.