duty. We have convicted a rebel of his guilt. We have brought him to you,
and we demand his sentence. Pilate, it is not so very long ago you had
hundreds massacred without judgment, without trial either, and for
what?--for one rebellious cry. You must have a reason for the favor you
show this man. It would interest me to learn it; it would interest
Tiberius as well. Listen to that multitude. If you pay no heed to our
accusation nor yet to their demand, on you the consequences rest. We are
absolved."

"He is your king," the procurator objected, meditatively.

Caiaphas wheeled like a feather a breeze has caught. One hand outstretched
he held to the mob, with the other he pointed to the Christ.

"Our king!" he cried. "The procurator says he is our king!"

As the thunder peals, a roar surged back:

"We have no other king than Caesar."

"Think of Sejanus," the high-priest suggested. The thrust was so well
timed it told.

Pilate looked sullenly about. "Fetch me water," he ordered.

A silver bowl was brought, and borrowing a custom from the Jews he
loathed, he dipped his fingers in it.

"I wash my hands of it all," he muttered.

Caiaphas looked at the elders and sighed with infinite relief. He had
conquered. For the first time that day he smiled. He became gracious also,
and he bowed.

"The blood be upon us, my lord, and on our children. Will you give the
order?"

"Calcol!"

The centurion approached. An order was given him in an undertone, and as
he turned to the guards, Pilate drew the staff of office across his knee,
snapped it in two, tossed the pieces to the ground, and through the ranks
of his servitors passed on into the great blue vestibule beyond.

CHAPTER X.

X.

In a sook near the Gannath Gate Mary stood. In the distance the palace of
Herod defied the sun. Beyond the gate lay the Hennom Valley, the Geia
Hennom, contracted by the people into Ge' Hennom, or Gehenna, and
converted by them into a sewer, a place where carrion was thrown, and the
filth of a great city. In earlier days children had been immolated to
Moloch there, human victims had been burned; it was a place accursed, and
to purify the air, as a safeguard against pestilence, the offal was
consumed by bonfires that were constantly renewed and never extinguished.
At its extremity was an elevation, a hilly contour which to the popular
fancy suggested a skull. To