As she spoke, the noise of some heavy mass striking against the bronze gates echoed like thunder through the temple, and at each blow a chorus of hideous yells rose, wild and long-drawn-out, as though the fiends of hell were screaming in joy over the souls of the lost.

The priests drew together, trembling with fear, brave and devoted though they were.  Some of them would have run towards the door, but the Syrian maid stood before them.

“Ye are dead men and there is no salvation—­ye must die like men,” said the little maid, quietly.  “Let me go to my mistress.”  And she pushed through the crowd of white-robed men, who surged together in their sudden fear, like a white-crested wave heaved up from the deep by a fierce wind.

Nehushta still held Zoroaster’s hand and stared wildly upon the helpless priests.  Her one thought was to save the man she loved, but she saw well enough that it was too late.  Nevertheless she appealed to the priests.

“Can none of you save him?” she cried.

Foremost in the little crowd was a stern, dark man—­the same who had been the high priest before Zoroaster came, the same who had first hurled defiance at the intruder, and then had given him his whole allegiance.  He spoke out loudly: 

“We will save him and thee if we are able,” he cried in brave enthusiasm for his chief.  “We will take you between us and open the doors, and it may be that we can fight our way out—­though we are all slain, he may be saved.”  He would have laid hold on Zoroaster, and there was not one of the priests who would not have laid down his life in the gallant attempt.  But Zoroaster gently put him back.

“Ye cannot save me, for my hour is come,” he said, and a radiance of unearthly glory stole upon his features, so that he seemed transfigured and changed before them all.  “The foe are as a thousand men against one.  Here we must die like men, and like priests of the Lord before His altar.”

The thundering at the doors continued to echo through the whole temple, almost drowning every other sound as it came; and the yells of the infuriated besiegers rose louder and louder between.

Zoroaster’s voice rang out clear and strong and the band of priests gathered more and more closely about him.  Nehushta still held his hand tightly between her own, and, pale as death, she looked up to him as he spoke.  The little Syrian girl stood, beside her mistress, very quite and grave.

“Hear me, ye priests of the Lord,” said Zoroaster.  “We are doomed men and must surely die, though we know not by whose hand we perish.  Now, therefore, I beseech you to think not of this death which we must suffer in our mortal bodies, but to open your eyes to the things which are not mortal and which perish not eternally.  For man is but a frail and changing creature as regards his mortality, seeing that his life is not longer than the lives of other created things, and he is delicate and sickly and exposed to manifold dangers from his birth.  But the soul of man dieth not, neither is there any taint of death in it, but it liveth for ever and is made glorious above the stars.  For the stars, also, shall have an end, and the earth—­even as our bodies must end here this night; but our soul shall see the glory of God, the All-Wise, and shall live.”