“What would you have brother?” said Dismas to Barabbas, who had often scorned him so bitterly.  “Am I not a prisoner, too?  Haven’t you always preached that right lay with the stronger?  So then the Romans are right this time.  Once you betrayed me and forced me to join the plundering Bedouins, most excellent Barabbas, and now it’s my turn.  I’ve betrayed you to the arm of Rome.  And we’ll probably be impaled!” Then, as if that were a real delight, he brought his hand down cheerfully on his companion’s shoulder so that his chains rattled.  “Yes, my dearest brother, they will impale us!”

They were brought in gangs to Jerusalem, where they lay in prison for many long months awaiting death.  On account of his self-surrender, Dismas had been granted his wish for solitary confinement.  He desired, undisturbed, to take stock of his wasted life.  A never-ending line of dark, bloody figures passed before him.  But there was one patch of light amid the gloom.  It had happened many years ago, but he had a very clear remembrance of that distant hour.  A young mother with her child rode on an ass.  The infant spread out his little arms and looked at him.  But never in his life had human creature looked at him like that child had looked, with such a glance of ardent love.

If only once again, before he died, he could but see a beam of light like that.

CHAPTER XXII

When the people who had gathered round Jesus heard that Saul, the terrible weaver, was scouring the desert with a troop of police, they began to melt away.  They feared unpleasant consequences.  They fully recognised the right, but most of them were disinclined to suffer persecution for that right.  They must return to their domestic duties, to their families, industries, and commerce, and, so far as was possible, live according to the Master’s teaching.  They left Him because it seemed to them that His cause was falling.  In the end there were just a few faithful ones who stayed with Him, and even some of them were in hopes that He would reveal the power of the Messiah.  But they all urged Him to repair to some other neighbourhood.  Jesus was not afraid of having to render an account of Himself to His adversaries in Jerusalem, but the time had not yet come, the work was not yet finished.  He knew that He could never retrace His steps, for the more incontestable His justification was, the more dangerous it would seem to them.  With His now dwindled troop of followers He left the desert to revisit once again His native Galilee.

But here His opponents were no better than before; houses were closed as He approached, the people got out of His way when He began to speak.  Only Mary, with all a mother’s simple faith, said; “Ah, you have come at last, my son!  Now stay, with me!”