Page:The centurion's story (IA centurionsstory00macf).pdf/16

 sneaky priests could never get up the courage to begin the enterprise in the daytime; and the other was that Pilate is a foxy old crow and knew as well as the Jews that to take the Nazarene at noon time in the heydey of his popularity with the gaping, adoring crowd around, would be to precipitate a riot and not Vulcan himself knows where a tumult among these Jews would stop. So, at night, we jostled down the dry ravine called Kedron and up the rough and tangled sides of the mountain called Olivet. Here, amid the shadowy recesses that hide themselves beneath the tangle of olive trees that cover a part of the hill it was his wont to retire at night. To the place where, all alone, he kept his tryst with the Hebrew god, Jehovah, whose representative he claimed to be, a hound called Judas, one of his own, guided us. It may have been the clank of sword upon armour, it may have been the grinding of a grieve upon a rock that revealed our presence—for we went quietly enough, you must be assured, for, of all the cowards in whose breasts fear ever grew, commend me to this sneaking bunch of Temple Priests. Whatever it was, the party heard our coming. And I, who, though in the rear, have perhaps an ear for such things, caught the quiet, masterful tones of a commander of men speaking to his followers. It was a little nook, dark as the Cave of Death itself; but suddenly we all stopped, hushed with expectancy. Just ahead of us in the shadow were the low murmuring tones that did not come from our own people. Then a trembling priest upheld high his torch before him and I saw a vision. A huddled, startled group of men for background and before them a figure—no, not a figure,—a face; yet the poise of the head, the commanding dignity