Chapter V
BY THE WAYSIDE
By sunset, the Maccabee and Julian of Ephesus had taken the road to
Jerusalem again.
As they reached the crest of a series of ridges there lay before them
a long gentle slope smooth and dun-colored as some soft pelt, dropping
down into a tender vale with levels of purple vapor hanging over it.
At the end of this declivity, leagues in length, was a faint blue
shape, cloudlike and almost merged with the cold color of the eastern
horizon, but suddenly developing at its summit a delicate white peak.
The sunset reaching it as they rode changed the point to a pinnacle of
ruby before their eyes. Their shadows that had ridden before them
merged with the shade over the world. Then with a soft, whispery,
ghost-like intaking of the breath, a quantity of sand on the straight
road before them got up under their horses' feet and moved away to
another spot and dropped again with a peppering sound and was dead
moveless earth again. The little breath of wind from under the edge of
the sky had fallen.
In the silence between the muffled beat of hooves the Maccabee heard
at his ears the quick lively throb of a busy pump. With it went the
firm rush of a subdued stream. He was hearing his own heart-beat, his
own life flowing through his veins. Since nature in him had hurried
him out of the synagogue after its own desire, he seemed to have
become primitive, conscious of the human creature in him.
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