Page:Lazarus, a tale of the world's great miracle.djvu/52

40 scoffing and mocking of the Jews; for Joanna, the wife of Chuza, who often came to see Lazarus and to bring gifts of fruit, never failed, with the garrulity of her class, to recount the gossip gathered in the market-place, if not to the family of Lazarus, at least to Rachel their handmaiden.

"What say the Jews of our master Lazarus?" the latter inquired one day. "Do they say that the Lord will restore him or that he shall die?"

"They say, 'Could not this Man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?'"

"Yet he is not dead. Methinks the Lord doth it to try the heart of my dear mistresses," said Rachel, who shared her master's belief in the Messiah.

Once more it was evening, and Mary had escaped from the heart-rending surroundings of the sick-chamber while Lazarus slept; he was looking paler and more wan than he had ever looked before. It was about the hour that the Nazarene was wont to return, for, while preaching to the multitudes He seemed to find relief in the solitudes of the country, and to like to shun the noise and tumult of great cities. Sadly she stood on the terrace that looked down upon that valley, in which she had once striven to comfort her poor brother. How doubly pathetic was that memory now! Loving and trusting as she was, she could not help joining in the strange wonder of those days. Death, with its attendant terror, had seemed so far while Christ was near. To be sure, in the far distance, death was looming on them all, for they knew the Lord must die; and it seemed a certain thing that, after His death, the Jews would