Page:The centurion's story (IA centurionsstory00macf).pdf/15

 "Come back, come back, oh, man! come back! and live thy life and work thy mortal will again upon us and among us," it would be for this man Jesus.

For, by the way, it is of him, Jesus the Nazarene, that I write. You know of him before from our long habit to set down each to the other the curious that we see and hear. As once I wrote you of the rumours that came to me, I thought him half a charlatan and all a fool.

To begin with, the priests like him not. He had a mind that cut like a blade, a tongue that blistered when it struck a rogue. He had more keenness to discern a rascal than any I have ever known and so the priests like him not. Blit, ye gods! the man was brave. He feared nor heaven, nor earth, nor hell, and when he loosed himself upon these priestly vultures, he made their feathers curl. I warrant you, with mere words, he singed them as a cook a fowl. Now, some loose word of his stirred up the charge that he would be a king like Cæsar, and these venomous priests came to Pilate with it. You know our worthy Governor, who, if he should read this line, would love me even less than he does, which, God wot, is little enough. Pilate would sell the blood in the veins of his Emperor at so much a measure, if thereby he might pacify the leaders of the people while he squeezed the milky fatness out of the land into his own coffers. So from Pilate, an order of arrest was easy as a prescription for sore eyes from a doctor. Those hulking cowards that call themselves the Temple Police were to make the arrest, but I am detailed with a guard to police the police.

It was done at night and quietly, not to say decently. There were two reasons for this. One was that these