Few and quick were the words we were able to exchange, for the way jammed on the moment, and soon my men and horses were being pressed and jostled.  Miriam was sheltered in an angle of house-wall.

“Have they got the fisherman yet?” I asked.

“No; but he is just outside the wall.  He has ridden up to Jerusalem on an ass, with a multitude before and behind; and some, poor dupes, have hailed him as he passed as King of Israel.  That finally is the pretext with which Hanan will compel Pilate.  Truly, though not yet taken, the sentence is already written.  This fisherman is a dead man.”

“But Pilate will not arrest him,” I defended.  Miriam shook her head.

“Hanan will attend to that.  They will bring him before the Sanhedrim.  The sentence will be death.  They may stone him.”

“But the Sanhedrim has not the right to execute,” I contended.

“Jesus is not a Roman,” she replied.  “He is a Jew.  By the law of the Talmud he is guilty of death, for he has blasphemed against the law.”

Still I shook my head.

“The Sanhedrim has not the right.”

“Pilate is willing that it should take that right.”

“But it is a fine question of legality,” I insisted.  “You know what the Romans are in such matters.”

“Then will Hanan avoid the question,” she smiled, “by compelling Pilate to crucify him.  In either event it will be well.”

A surging of the mob was sweeping our horses along and grinding our knees together.  Some fanatic had fallen, and I could feel my horse recoil and half rear as it tramped on him, and I could hear the man screaming and the snarling menace from all about rising to a roar.  But my head was over my shoulder as I called back to Miriam: 

“You are hard on a man you have said yourself is without evil.”

“I am hard upon the evil that will come of him if he lives,” she replied.

Scarcely did I catch her words, for a man sprang in, seizing my bridle-rein and leg and struggling to unhorse me.  With my open palm, leaning forward, I smote him full upon cheek and jaw.  My hand covered the face of him, and a hearty will of weight was in the blow.  The dwellers in Jerusalem are not used to man’s buffets.  I have often wondered since if I broke the fellow’s neck.

* * * * *

Next I saw Miriam was the following day.  I met her in the court of Pilate’s palace.  She seemed in a dream.  Scarce her eyes saw me.  Scarce her wits embraced my identity.  So strange was she, so in daze and amaze and far-seeing were her eyes, that I was reminded of the lepers I had seen healed in Samaria.

She became herself by an effort, but only her outward self.  In her eyes was a message unreadable.  Never before had I seen woman’s eyes so.

She would have passed me ungreeted had I not confronted her way.  She paused and murmured words mechanically, but all the while her eyes dreamed through me and beyond me with the largeness of the vision that filled them.