rs I had witnessed in
Samaria on my way through Jericho.

Pilate's wife sat entranced at what I told. Came to our ears distant
shoutings and cries of some street crowd, and we knew the soldiers were
keeping the streets cleared.

"And you believe this wonder, Lodbrog?" Pilate demanded. "You believe
that in the flash of an eye the festering sores departed from the
lepers?"

"I saw them healed," I replied. "I followed them to make certain. There
was no leprosy in them."

"But did you see them sore?--before the healing?" Pilate insisted.

I shook my head.

"I was only told so," I admitted. "When I saw them afterward, they had
all the seeming of men who had once been lepers. They were in a daze.
There was one who sat in the sun and ever searched his body and stared
and stared at the smooth flesh as if unable to believe his eyes. He
would not speak, nor look at aught else than his flesh, when I questioned
him. He was in a maze. He sat there in the sun and stared and stated."

Pilate smiled contemptuously, and I noted the quiet smile on Miriam's
face was equally contemptuous. And Pilate's wife sat as if a corpse,
scarce breathing, her eyes wide and unseeing.

Spoke Ambivius: "Caiaphas holds--he told me but yesterday--that the
fisherman claims that he will bring God down on earth and make here a new
kingdom over which God will rule--"

"Which would mean the end of Roman rule," I broke in.

"That is where Caiaphas and Hanan plot to embroil Rome," Miriam
explained. "It is not true. It is a lie they have made."

Pilate nodded and asked:

"Is there not somewhere in your ancient books a prophecy that the priests
here twist into the intent of this fisherman's mind?"

To this she agreed, and gave him the citation. I relate the incident to
evidence the depth of Pilate's study of this people he strove so hard to
keep in order.

"What I have heard," Miriam continued, "is that this Jesus preaches the
end of the world and the beginning of God's kingdom, not here, but in
heaven."

"I have had report of that," Pilate raid. "It is true. This Jesus holds
the justness of the Roman tax. He holds that Rome shall rule until all
rule passes away with the passing of the world. I see more clearly the
trick Hanan is playing me."

"It is even claimed by some of his followers," Ambivius volunteered,
"that he is God Himself."

"I have no report that he has so said," Pilate replied.

"Why not?" his wife breathed.