The slow unconscious smile that had worked such perfect transformation that first morning grew in his eyes.  It was comfort, compliment and protection all in one.  Then he went away into the moonlight.

Within a few feet he came upon Julian of Ephesus with immense rancor written on his face.  The Maccabee was disturbed.  It was not well that this conscienceless man should have discovered that they were traveling near this girl and her old servant.  Much as the young man wished to loiter along the road to Jerusalem to keep her in sight while he could, he saw plainly that to defend her from Julian he must ride on and leave her.

“Your meal,” said Julian, “is as cold as Jugurtha’s bath.”

“I have lost my appetite,” the Maccabee said carelessly.  “Saddle and let us ride on.”

At his words, a picture of his own comfortable progress to Jerusalem compared to her long foot-weary tramp for days over the inhospitable hills appeared to him.  The instant impulse did not permit himself to argue the immoderation of his care of her.  Julian clung to his side until they were ready to depart.  Then the Maccabee, using subterfuge to give him opportunity to escape the vigilant eyes of the Ephesian, suddenly clapped his hand to his hip, exclaiming that he had left his weapon at the camp.

Before Julian’s sneer reached him, he mounted quickly and rode up the hill, meaning to offer his horse to the girl.

The bed of coals still glowed cheerily, but the shelter of sheepskins, the old servant and the girl in the tissue of woven moonbeams were gone.

He stood still, vexed, disappointed and resentful.

“The old incubus has made her go on, purposely, to get rid of me!” he decided finally.  “Perpol!  He won’t!”

Chapter VI

DAWN IN THE HILLS

It was a night that the Maccabee did not readily forget.  Since the girl had moved on to avoid him, he had become alive to a delinquency that was more of a sensation than an admission.  His thought of her, that had been a diversion before, now seemed to be a transgression.  An incident of this nature during the fourteen years of his life in Ephesus would have engaged his conscience only a moment if at all, but at this last hour it amounted to a deflection from his newly resolved uprightness.

Julian rode in a constant air of expectancy and increasing irritation.  The slightest sound from the haunted hills elicited a start from him and his intense attention until the origin of the sound proved itself.  Many Passover pilgrims who had proceeded by night passed under his close scrutiny and from time to time he stopped the Maccabee in a speech with a peremptory command to listen.  All this engaged the Maccabee’s interest, but he made no comment until, on occasion of his casual word in praise of the fidelity of Aquila, Julian flew into a rage and reviled the emissary until the Maccabee brought him up with a sharp word.