Page:The centurion's story (IA centurionsstory00macf).pdf/39

 cord and to the seals of Pilate upon it. They were intact.

Some foolish weakness made me lean an ear against the stone and listen. All was still. My senses detected nothing but the chill of the rock and the heavy odour of the pounds upon pounds of spices in which the Jews swathe the bodies of their respected dead. And then, inquiring where the women were wont to appear, I started that way. It was up the hill a stone's cast, and along beneath the brow of it, in another garden, like the last but more secluded. Here, beneath heavy shade, one might pass the night in this hospitable atmosphere with no more than a cloak between his body and the ground and the fold of a tunic between him and the stars. There was but one woman. Have you ever observed, Marcus, that the sound of one woman weeping, somehow, gives the impression that there are two? So my soldiers had been fooled. Here this one was, shrouded in the dusk. I spoke to her and she ceased her sobbing at once and responded to my address in startled tones. "Why do you weep?" I asked. "Was he your brother?" "No," she answered, "no, but he was like a brother unto me and something more. I loved him, but as one would love God, whom indeed we had thought he was."

This was said in tones of the most complete dejection 'and melting sadness that ever I had listened to. With 'weeping through the night, the woman's soul had become so tuned to grief, that her sobs were a melting symphony of sorrow, like to which mine ears had never listened before.

"You were a disciple of his?" I asked.

"Ten thousand demons held me in a bitter thrall," she