d against the wall, Seraiah
met that Jew who had become a maniac on the day Jerusalem attacked
Titus. Without warning the maniac leaped up into an intensely rigid
posture; his legs spread, his lean arms upstretched at painful
tension, his mouth wide, his eyes dilated immensely in their hollow
depths.

Seraiah passed him as if no man stood in his way. Instantly the maniac
wheeled, as a huge spread-eagle wind-vane on its staff, and stood at
gaze, the broad uninterrupted light of the beacon shining down on him
and the mysterious man. The street ended short of the wall. About the
base of the fortification was an open space, in which was planted a
scaling-ladder. Seraiah climbed this, an infinitesimal detail on the
great blank of blackened stone.

Hundreds, rushing upon the wall, though a goodly distance from the
point at which the strange man had mounted, climbed it and beat off
the sentries.

And the foremost who reached the top saw the Roman Tower directly
opposite Seraiah shudder suddenly and sink in a roaring cloud of dust
upon itself to the earth.

Instantly the maniac below broke the tense silence with a scream that
was heard in the paralyzed Roman camp:

"It is He, the Deliverer! Come!"

Of the thousands of Jews that heard the madman's cry, every heart
credited it. Hundreds melted away suddenly, as if stricken with terror
at what they might see; other hundreds scrambled down from their
places to run purposelessly, crying aimless things to the night over
the city; yet others covered their faces with their arms and fell in
their places, expecting the end of the world; and of the rest, the
less imaginative, the more composed and the more curious, remained on
the walls to see enacted a further miracle. Uproar had broken out
instantly among the four stolid legions of Titus on the Assyrian
bivouac. Lights flashed out everywhere; great running to and fro could
be distinguished; rapid trumpet-calls and the prolonged roll of drums
from company quarters to quarters were echoed back from Antonia and
from Hippicus. The startled shouts of commanders; the nervous dropping
of arms; the sharp excited response to roll-call; the sound of
sentries challenging, the curt response by countersign, showed
everywhere irregularities and the symptoms of panic in the immovable
ranks of Titus.

Seraiah meanwhile had disappeared from his place as mysteriously as he
had come.

Many of the Jews who remained on the wall believed that he