Marcus bowed, perceiving that the subject was not to be pursued, and said to Nehushta, “Continue the story, my friend.”

“Lord, the father of my lady’s mother is a very wealthy Jewish merchant of Tyre, named Benoni.”

“Benoni,” he said, “I know him well, too well for a poor man!—­a Jew of the Jews, a Zealot, they say.  At least he hates us Romans enough to be one, although many is the dinner that I have eaten at his palace.  He is the most successful trader in all Tyre, unless it be his rival Amram, the Phoenician, but a hard man, and as able as he is hard.  Now I think of it, he has no living children, so why does not your lady, his grandchild, dwell with him rather than in this desert?”

“Lord, you have answered your own question.  Benoni is a Jew of the Jews; his granddaughter is a Christian, as I am also.  Therefore when her mother died, I brought her here to be taken care of by her uncle Ithiel the Essene, and I do not think Benoni knows even that she lives.  Lord, perhaps I have said too much; but you must soon have heard the story from the Essenes, and we trust to you, who chance to be Benoni’s friend, to keep our secret from him.”

“You do not trust in vain; yet it seems sad that all the wealth and station which are hers by right should thus be wasted.”

“Lord, rank and station are not everything; freedom of faith and person are more than these.  My lady lacks for nothing, and—­this is all her story.”

“Not quite, friend; you have not told me her name.”

“Lord, it is Miriam.”

“Miriam, Miriam,” he repeated, his slightly foreign accent dwelling softly on the syllables.  “It is a very pretty name, befitting such a——­” and he checked himself.

By now they were on the crest of the rise, and, stopping between two clumps of thorn trees, Miriam broke in hastily: 

“See, sir, there below lies the village of the Essenes; those green trees to the left mark the banks of Jordan, whence we irrigate our fields, while that grey stretch of water to the right, surrounded by a wall of mountain, is the Dead Sea.”

“Is it so?  Well, the green is pleasant in this desert, and those fields look well cultivated.  I hope to visit them some day, for I was brought up in the country, and, although I am a soldier, still understand a farm.  As for the Dead Sea, it is even more dreary than I expected.  Tell me, lady, what is that large building yonder?”

“That,” she answered, “is the gathering hall of the Essenes.”

“And that?” he asked, pointing to a house which stood by itself.

“That is my home, where Nehushta and I dwell.”

“I guessed as much by the pretty garden.”  Then he asked her other questions, which she answered freely enough, for Miriam, although she was half Jewish, had been brought up among men, and felt neither fear nor shame in talking with them in a friendly and open fashion, as an Egyptian or a Roman or a Grecian lady might have done.