ver.
"Rabboni," she cried, "let me but do your will on earth, and afterwards
save me or destroy me as your pleasure is."

With that she had gone to her sister's house, and to the bewildered Martha
poured out her heart anew. There could be no question of forgiveness now,
of penitence even; her sins, such as they were, had been remitted by one
to whom pardon was an attribute. And this doubtless Martha understood, for
she took her in her arms unreproachfully and mingled her tears with hers.

Where all is marvel the marvellous disappears. To the accounts which Mary
gave of her journeys with the little band that followed the Master, Martha
listened with an attention which nothing could distract. With her she
sailed on the lovely lake; with her she visited cities smothering in the
scent of cassia and of sugar-cane; with her she passed through glens where
panthers prowled, and bandits crueller than they. With her eyes she saw
the listening multitudes, with her ears she heard again the words of
divine forgiveness; and, the lulab and the citron in her hands, she
assisted at the Feast of the Tabernacles, and watched the vain attempt to
charm the recalcitrant Temple and captivate the inimical town.

For in Jerusalem, in place of the reassuring confidence of peasants, was
the irritable incredulity of priests; instead of meadows, courts. Besides,
was not this prophet from Galilee, and what good had ever come from there?
Then, too, he was not an authorized teacher. He belonged to no school. The
followers of Hillel, the disciples of Shammai, did not recognize him. He
was merely a fractious Nazarene trained in the shop of a carpenter; one
who, by repeating that it was easier for a camel to pass through a
needle's eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, flattered
basely the mob of mendicants that surrounded him. The rabble admired, but
the clergy stood aloof. When he was not ignored he was disdained. Save the
pleb, no one listened.

Presently he spoke louder. Into the grave music of the Syro-Chaldaic
tongue he put the mutterings of thunder. Where he had preached, he
upbraided; in place of exquisite parables came sonorous threats. He
blessed but rarely, sometimes he cursed. That mosaic, the Law, he treated
like a cobweb; and to the arrogant clergy a rumor filtered that this
vagabond, who had not where to lay his head, declared his ability to
destroy the Temple, and to rebuild it, in three days, anew.

A rumor such as