feet of a great wooden tower filled with
archers. Here the fight was desperate, for the soldiers of Titus rushed
up by companies to defend their engine. But they could not drive back
that onset, and presently the tower was on fire, and in a last mad
effort to save their lives its defenders were casting themselves
headlong from the lofty platform. With shouts of triumph the Jews rushed
through the breaches in the second wall, and leaving what remained of
the castle of Antonia on the left, poured down into the maze of streets
and ruined houses that lay immediately behind the Old Tower whence
Miriam watched.

In front of this building, which the Romans had never attempted to
enter, since for military purposes it was useless to them, lay the open
space, once, no doubt, part of its garden, but of late years used as a
cattle market and a place where young men exercised themselves in arms.
Bordering the waste on its further side were strong fortifications, the
camping ground of the twelfth and fifteenth legions. Across this open
space those who remained of the Romans fled back towards their outer
line, followed by swarms of furious Jews. They gained them, such as
were not overtaken, but the Jews who pursued were met with so fierce
a charge, delivered by the fresh troops behind the defences, that
they were in turn swept back and took refuge among the ruined houses.
Suddenly Miriam's attention became concentrated upon the mounted officer
who led this charge, a gallant-looking man clad in splendid armour,
whose clear, ringing voice, as he uttered the words of command, had
caught her ear even through the tumult and the shouting. The Roman
onslaught having reached its limit, began to fall back again like the
water from an exhausted wave upon a slope of sand. At the moment the
Jews were in no condition to press the enemy's retreat, so that the
mounted officer who withdrew last of all, had time to turn his horse,
and heedless of the arrows that sang about him, to study the ground
now strewn with the wounded and the dead. Presently he looked up at the
deserted tower as though wondering whether he could make use of it, and
Miriam saw his face. It was Marcus, grown older, more thoughtful also,
and altered somewhat by a short curling beard, but still Marcus and no
other.

"Look! look!" she said.

Nehushta nodded. "Yes, it is he; I thought so from the first. And now,
having seen him, lady, shall we be going?"

"Going?" said Miriam, "