The Maccabee laughed, the sudden harsh laugh of one impelled to amusement unexpectedly.

“Assure Nicanor, for me, that I shall come out of Jerusalem one day.  Dead or alive, I shall do it!  You need not add that I did not specify the date of my exodus.  What is the word?”

“Berenice.  And Jove help you!  Farewell.”

Titus rode on.

A little later, after a parley with the Roman sentries and again with the sentries at the Gate of Hippicus, the Maccabee was admitted to the Holy City.

About him as he passed through the gates were the soldiers of Simon.  They were not such men as he expected to see defending the City of David.  There was an extravagant, half-pastoral manner about them, a pose of which they should not have been conscious at this hour of peril for the nation and the hierarchy.  He looked at their incomplete, meaningless uniform, at their arms, half savage, at their faces, half mad, and believed that he, with an army rationally organized and effectually equipped, would have little difficulty in subduing the unbalanced forces of Simon.

Since siege was laid, he did not expect to be met by Amaryllis’ servant in the purple turban.  He approached a citizen.

“I seek Amaryllis, the Seleucid,” he said.

The eye of the Jew traveled over him, with some disapproval.

“The mistress of the Gischalan?” was the returned inquiry.  The Maccabee assented calmly.  The young man indicated a broad street moving with people which led with tolerable directness toward the base of Moriah.

“Hence to the Tyropean Bridge at the end of this street; thence down beside the bridge into Gihon.  Cross to the wall supporting Moriah and builded against it thou wilt find a new house, of the fashion of the Greeks.  If thou canst pass her sentries, thou wilt find her within.”

The Maccabee thanked his informant and turned through the Passover hosts to follow the directions.

To a visitor recently familiar with the city, Jerusalem would have been strange; he would have been lost in its ruined and disordered streets.  But this man came with only the four corners of the compass to direct him and the Temple as a landmark to guide him.  Therefore though he entered upon territory which he had not traversed since childhood he went forward confidently.

It was not simple; it was not readily done; but the darkness found him at his destination.

When he was within a rod of the house, he was halted by a Jewish soldier.  He whispered to the man the word which Amaryllis had sent to him, and the soldier stepped aside and let him pass.

In another moment he was admitted to the house of Amaryllis.

A wick coated with aromatic wax burned in the brass bowl on a tripod and cast a crystal clear light down upon the exedra and the delicate lectern with its rolls of parchment and brass cylinders from which they had been withdrawn.  Opposite, with her arms close down to her sides, her hands clenched, her shoulders drawn up, stood the girl he had played for and won in the hills of Judea!