; she saw women and children pierced with spears. Then Nehushta
seized her by the hand, and plunging a knife into the arm of a man who
would have stayed them, dragged her away. They fled, an arrow sang past
her ear; something struck her on the foot. Still they fled, whither she
knew not, till at length the sound of the tumult died away. But not yet
would Nehushta stop, for she feared that they might be followed. So on
they went, and on, meeting few and heeded by none, till at length Miriam
sank to the ground, worn out with fear and flight.

"Up," said Nehushta.

"I cannot," she answered. "Something has hurt my foot. See, it bleeds!"

Nehushta looked about her, and saw that they were outside the second
wall in the new city of Bezetha, not far from the old Damascus Gate, for
there, to their right and a little behind them, rose the great tower of
Antonia. Beneath this wall were rubbish-heaps, foul-smelling and covered
over with rough grasses and some spring flowers, which grew upon the
slopes of the ancient fosse. Here seemed a place where they might lie
hid awhile, since there were no houses and it was unsavoury. She dragged
Miriam to her feet, and, notwithstanding her complaints and swollen
ankle, forced her on, till they came to a spot where, as it is to-day,
the wall was built upon foundations of living rock, roughly shaped,
and lined with crevices covered by tall weeds. To one of these crevices
Nehushta brought Miriam, and, seating her on a bed of grass, examined
her foot, which seemed to have been bruised by a stone from a sling.
Having no water with which to wash the bleeding hurt, she made a
poultice of crushed herbs and tied it about the ankle with a strip of
linen. Even before she had finished her task, so exhausted was Miriam
that she fell fast asleep. Nehushta watched her a while, wondering
what they should do next, till, in that lonely place bathed by the warm
spring sun, she also began to doze.

Suddenly she awoke with a start, having dreamed that she saw a man with
white face and beard peering at them from behind a rough angle of rock.
She stared: there was the rock as she had dreamed of it, but no man.
She looked upward. Above them, piled block upon gigantic block, rose the
wall, towering and impregnable. Thither he could not have gone, since
on it only a lizard could find foothold. Nor was he anywhere else, for
there was no cover; so she decided that he must have been some searcher
of the rubbish-heap,