After this, Miriam knew little of what happened.  Swords and spears flashed round her, the factions fell upon each other, slaughtering each other.  She saw Caleb cut down one of the soldiers of John, to be instantly assaulted in turn by a soldier of Simon, since all desired to kill, but none cared whom they slew.  She saw her grandfather rolling over and over on the ground in the grip of a man who looked like a priest; she saw women and children pierced with spears.  Then Nehushta seized her by the hand, and plunging a knife into the arm of a man who would have stayed them, dragged her away.  They fled, an arrow sang past her ear; something struck her on the foot.  Still they fled, whither she knew not, till at length the sound of the tumult died away.  But not yet would Nehushta stop, for she feared that they might be followed.  So on they went, and on, meeting few and heeded by none, till at length Miriam sank to the ground, worn out with fear and flight.

“Up,” said Nehushta.

“I cannot,” she answered.  “Something has hurt my foot.  See, it bleeds!”

Nehushta looked about her, and saw that they were outside the second wall in the new city of Bezetha, not far from the old Damascus Gate, for there, to their right and a little behind them, rose the great tower of Antonia.  Beneath this wall were rubbish-heaps, foul-smelling and covered over with rough grasses and some spring flowers, which grew upon the slopes of the ancient fosse.  Here seemed a place where they might lie hid awhile, since there were no houses and it was unsavoury.  She dragged Miriam to her feet, and, notwithstanding her complaints and swollen ankle, forced her on, till they came to a spot where, as it is to-day, the wall was built upon foundations of living rock, roughly shaped, and lined with crevices covered by tall weeds.  To one of these crevices Nehushta brought Miriam, and, seating her on a bed of grass, examined her foot, which seemed to have been bruised by a stone from a sling.  Having no water with which to wash the bleeding hurt, she made a poultice of crushed herbs and tied it about the ankle with a strip of linen.  Even before she had finished her task, so exhausted was Miriam that she fell fast asleep.  Nehushta watched her a while, wondering what they should do next, till, in that lonely place bathed by the warm spring sun, she also began to doze.

Suddenly she awoke with a start, having dreamed that she saw a man with white face and beard peering at them from behind a rough angle of rock.  She stared:  there was the rock as she had dreamed of it, but no man.  She looked upward.  Above them, piled block upon gigantic block, rose the wall, towering and impregnable.  Thither he could not have gone, since on it only a lizard could find foothold.  Nor was he anywhere else, for there was no cover; so she decided that he must have been some searcher of the rubbish-heap, who, seeing them hidden in the tall grasses, had fled away.  Miriam was still