So that day also, the last of the long siege, wore away.  At nightfall the thick mist cleared, and for the last time the rich rays of sunset shone upon the gleaming roof and burning pinnacles of the Temple and were reflected from the dazzling whiteness of its walls.  Never had it looked more beautiful than it did in that twilight as it towered, still perfect, above the black ruins of the desolated city.  The clamour and shouting had died away, even the mourners had ceased their pitiful cries; except the guards, the Romans had withdrawn and were eating their evening meal, while those who worked the terrible engines ceased from their destroying toil.  Peace, an ominous peace, brooded on the place, and everywhere, save for the flames that crackled among the cedar-wood beams in the roofs of the cloisters, was deep silence, such as in tropic lands precedes the bursting of a cyclone.  To Miriam who watched, it seemed as though in the midst of this unnatural quiet Jehovah was withdrawing Himself from the house where His Spirit dwelt and from the people who worshipped Him with their lips, but rejected Him in their hearts.  Her tormented nerves shuddered with a fear that was not of the body, as she stared upwards at the immense arch of the azure evening sky, half expecting that her mortal eyes would catch some vision of the departing wings of the Angel of the Lord.  But there she could see nothing except the shapes of hundreds of high-poised eagles.  “Where the carcase is there shall the eagles be gathered together,” she muttered to herself, and remembering that these four birds were come to feast upon the bones of the whole people of the Jews and upon her own, she shut her eyes and groaned.

Then the light died on the Temple towers and faded from the pale slopes of the mountains, and in place of the wheeling carrion birds bright stars shone out one by one upon the black mantle of the night.

Once again, setting her teeth because of the agony that the touch of the marble gave to her raw and swollen flesh, Miriam began to fret the cords which bound her wrists against the rough edge of the angle-iron.  She was sure that it was nearly worn through, but oh! how could she endure the agony until it parted?  Still she did endure, for at her feet lay the bottle, and burning thirst drove her to the deed.  Suddenly her reward came, and she felt that her arms were free; yes, numbed, swollen and bleeding, they fell against her sides, wrenching the stiffened muscles of her shoulders back to their place in such a fashion that she well-nigh fainted with the pain.  Still they were free, and presently she was able to lift them, and with the help of her teeth to loose the ends of the cord, so that the blood could run once more through her blackened wrists and hands.  Again she waited till some feeling had come back into her fingers, which were numb and like to mortify.  Then she knelt down, and drawing the leather bottle to her, held it between her palms, while, with her teeth,