But on this day there was a singular agitation visible in the multitude.  The sky was veiled with a portentous gloom, and currents of excitement seemed to flash through the crowd like the thrill which shakes the forest on the eve of a storm.  A secret tide was sweeping them all one way.  The clatter of sandals, and the soft, thick sound of thousands of bare feet shuffling over the stones, flowed unceasingly along the street that leads to the Damascus gate.

Artaban joined company with a group of people from his own country, Parthian Jews who had come up to keep the Passover, and inquired of them the cause of the tumult, and where they were going.

“We are going,” they answered, “to the place called Golgotha, outside the city walls, where there is to be an execution.  Have you not heard what has happened?  Two famous robbers are to be crucified, and with them another, called Jesus of Nazareth, a man who has done many wonderful works among the people, so that they love him greatly.  But the priests and elders have said that he must die, because he gave himself out to be the Son of God.  And Pilate has sent him to the cross because he said that he was the ‘King of the Jews.’”

How strangely these familiar words fell upon the tired heart of Artaban!  They had led him for a lifetime over land and sea.  And now they came to him darkly and mysteriously like a message of despair.  The King had arisen, but he had been denied and cast out.  He was about to perish.  Perhaps he was already dying.  Could it be the same who had been born in Bethlehem, thirty-three years ago, at whose birth the star had appeared in heaven, and of whose coming the prophets had spoken?

Artaban’s heart beat unsteadily with that troubled, doubtful apprehension which is the excitement of old age.  But he said within himself, “The ways of God are stranger than the thoughts of men, and it may be that I shall find the King, at last, in the hands of His enemies, and shall come in time to offer my pearl for His ransom before He dies.”

So the old man followed the multitude with slow and painful steps towards the Damascus gate of the city.  Just beyond the entrance of the guard-house a troop of Macedonian soldiers came down the street, dragging a young girl with torn dress and dishevelled hair.  As the Magian paused to look at her with compassion, she broke suddenly from the hands of her tormentors, and threw herself at his feet, clasping him around the knees.  She had seen his white cap and the winged circle on his breast.

[Illustration:  “The old man followed the multitude”]

“Have pity on me,” she cried, “and save me, for the sake of the God of Purity!  I also am a daughter of the true religion which is taught by the Magi.  My father was a merchant of Parthia, but he is dead, and I am seized for his debts to be sold as a slave.  Save me from worse than death!”