“There is nothing to be done,” he moaned when she had finished.  “To open the door now would be but to reveal the secret of our hiding-place to the Jews or to the Romans, either of whom would put us to the sword, the Jews for food, the Romans because we are Jews.  We can only leave her to God and protect ourselves.”

“Had I my will,” answered Nehushta, “I would leave myself to God and still strive to protect her.  Yet you are right, seeing that many lives cannot be risked for the sake of one girl.  But what of this man?”

“We will do our best for him,” answered Ithiel, “for so she who sacrificed herself for his sake would have wished.  Also years ago he was our guest and befriended us.  Stay here a while and I will bring men to carry him to the vault.”

So Ithiel went away to return with sundry of the brethren, who lifted Marcus and bore him down the stairs and passages to that darksome chamber where Miriam had slept, while other brethren shut the trap-door, and loosened the roof of the passage, blocking it with stone so that without great labour none could pass that path for ever.

Here in this silent, sunless vault for many, many days Marcus lay sick with a brain fever, of which, had it not been for the skilful nursing of Nehushta and of the leeches among the Essenes, he must certainly have died.  But these leeches, who were very clever, doctored the deep sword-cut in his head, removing with little iron hooks the fragments of bone which pressed upon his brain, and dressing that wound and another in his knee with salves.

Meanwhile, they learned by their spies that both the Temple and Mount Sion had fallen.  Also they heard of the trial of Miriam and of her exposure on the Gate Nicanor, but of what happened to her afterwards they could gather nothing.  So they mourned her as dead.

Now, their food being at length exhausted and the watch of the Romans having relaxed, they determined, those who were left of them, for some had died and Ithiel himself was very ill, to attempt to escape from the hateful vaults that had sheltered them for all these months.  A question arose as to what was to be done with Marcus, now but a shadow of a man, who still wandered somewhat in his mind, but who had passed the worst of his sickness and seemed like to live.  Some were for abandoning him; some for sending him back to the Romans; but Nehushta showed that it would be wise to keep him as a hostage, so that if they were attacked they might produce him and in return for their care, perhaps buy their lives.  In the end they agreed upon this course, not so much for what they might gain by it, but because they knew that it would have pleased the lost maid whom they called their Queen, who had perished to save this man.