multitude. The sky was veiled with a portentous gloom, and currents of
excitement seemed to flash through the crowd like the thrill which
shakes the forest on the eve of a storm. A secret tide was sweeping
them all one way. The clatter of sandals, and the soft, thick sound of
thousands of bare feet shuffling over the stones, flowed unceasingly
along the street that leads to the Damascus gate.

Artaban joined company with a group of people from his own country,
Parthian Jews who had come up to keep the Passover, and inquired of
them the cause of the tumult, and where they were going.

"We are going," they answered, "to the place called Golgotha, outside
the city walls, where there is to be an execution. Have you not heard
what has happened? Two famous robbers are to be crucified, and with
them another, called Jesus of Nazareth, a man who has done many
wonderful works among the people, so that they love him greatly. But
the priests and elders have said that he must die, because he gave
himself out to be the Son of God. And Pilate has sent him to the cross
because he said that he was the 'King of the Jews.'"

How strangely these familiar words fell upon the tired heart of
Artaban! They had led him for a lifetime over land and sea. And now
they came to him darkly and mysteriously like a message of despair. The
King had arisen, but He had been denied and cast out. He was about to
perish. Perhaps He was already dying. Could it be the same who had been
born in Bethlehem thirty-three years ago, at whose birth the star had
appeared in heaven, and of whose coming the prophets had spoken?

Artaban's heart beat unsteadily with that troubled, doubtful
apprehension which is the excitement of old age. But he said within