If it will take us years to build the wall, Amos said, we may as well save ourselves the trouble of becoming builders, for the robbers will be upon us before it is high enough to keep them out; we shall lose our lives before a half-finished wall, and methinks I might as well have been left to my flock on the hills.  Thou speakest truly, Saddoc replied, for I doubt if thou wilt prove a better builder than thou wast a shepherd.  If my sheep were poor, thy interpretations of the Scriptures are poorer still, Amos said, and the twain fell to quarrelling apart, while the brethren took counsel together.  If this mischief did not befall them, and a wall twenty feet high and many feet in thickness were raised, would they be able to store enough food in the cave to bear a three-months’ siege?  And would they be able to continue the cultivation of their figs along the terrace if robbers were at the gates?  But a siege, Manahem answered these disputants, cannot well be, for the shepherds on the hills would carry the news of the siege to Jericho, whence troops would be sent to our help, and at their approach the robbers would flee into the hills.  What we have to fear is not a siege, but a sudden assault; and from a successful assault a wall will save us.  That is true, Saddoc said.  And to defend the wall we must possess ourselves of weapons, Caleb, Benjamin and Eleakim cried; and Shallum told them that a certain hard wood, of which there was an abundance in Jericho, could be shaped into cutlasses whereby a man’s head might be struck off at a blow.

At these words the brethren took heart, and Hazael selected Shallum for messenger to go to Jericho for the wood, and a few days afterwards the Essenes were busy carving cutlasses for their defence, and designing a great wall with towers, whilst others were among the cliffs hurling down great masses of stone out of which a wall would soon begin to rise.

And every day, an hour after sunrise, the Essenes were quarrying stone and building their wall, and though they had designed it on a great scale, it rose so fast that in two months they were bragging that it would protect them against the great robber, Saulous, a pillager of many caravans, of whom Jesus had much to say when he came down from the hills.  The wall will save you, Jesus said, from him.  But who will save my flock from Saulous, who is besieged in a cave, and comes forth at night to seek for food for himself and his followers?  But if the cave is besieged?  Caleb said, laying down his trowel.  The cave has two entrances, Jesus answered, and he told them that his belief now was that what remained of the flock should be sent to Jerusalem for sale.  The rams, of course, should be kept, and a few of the best ewes for a flock to be raised in happier times.  These were his words one sad evening, and they were so convincing that the builders laid down their trowels and repaired to the vaulted gallery to sit in council.  But while they sat thinking