ion,"--a trait of the Times--had degenerated into
"without common humanity."

For half-an-hour longer THE TWO WITNESSES preached, warned, pleaded
with the multitude. Then they stepped from the pile of marble blocks,
and passed quietly away.

As was customary after every such session of testimony, the crowd split
up into many groups and discussed the whole situation.

On this occasion some five hundred men and women, mostly Jews, who had
received the testimony,[1] were moving off in a body, when an unlocked
for incident occurred.

Through all the witnessing of God's two prophets, there had stood among
the listening crowd, a tall, swarthy-faced man, richly attired, a Jew
by race, (that was evident from the marked Hebrew lines of his face).
The expression of his face, during the WITNESSING, had alternated
between mocking and rage. Now his eyes followed the departing band of
men and women who were loyal to the Gospel of the Kingdom.

With a scornful, devilish laugh, he pointed to the departing people, as
he cried: "If we cannot kill the spawn that preaches, why not kill the
hatched-out ones?"

The crowd was ripe for anything. With a roar, like unto Hell itself,
they raced after the godly band and in a moment surrounded them,
brandishing the long murderous knives of the east, and revolvers of the
west.

The foul work of wiping out the whole band of faithful ones began.
Every shot went home, every knife found a faithful heart. The twin
lusts of hate and of religious fanaticism burned in the breasts of the
mob. It was a carnival of cruelty and blood. Everyone wanted to see
it. Other thousands hearing the sound of the shots, poured through the
gates of the city. Everyone wanted a sight of the _entertainment_--for
this the slaying was regarded, as, of old-time, Rome entertained
herself by filling the eighty thousand seats of the great theatre, to
see the Christians thrown to the lions.

There was not a coign of vantage to which the mob did not climb. They
climbed upon the roofs, the balconies, held themselves perilously upon
the sloping verandas, they stood upon window-sills, and hung from
electric light pillars, and tram-line standards. They shouted, and
sang, and urged upon the slayers to mutilate as well as kill "the
carrion."

Then, suddenly, above all the din, and above even the crack of
revolvers, the great song of Apleon, that foul ode of idolatrous
laudation, set to most wonderful music, rang out fr