Page:The centurion's story (IA centurionsstory00macf).pdf/49

 desecrated tomb halted abruptly. What body thieves would pause to remove the shroud? Would they not, fearful of discovery, snatch the corpse and make off with it swiftly in a frenzy of terror? However it might be desirable to lighten the body of this round hundred pounds of spices. So my grave-robbing theory got upon its legs and limped on a few paces, only to receive its death-blow as I looked upon the shroud itself, composed of strips of linen cloth, and folded in a pile, I swear to you, Marcus, as a woman might have done it. What body of Galilean fishermen stealing the body of a dead comrade from under the guard of Cæsar, and hurriedly casting off the weight of embalming materials, would have stopped to dress the crypt with folded linens like a fuller's bench? Would not rather the eager strength of ready fingers have torn these cloths from the body as it lay prostrate and have strewn them in dire confusion? You shall judge if this ordered heap of linen did not prove that what possessed me was no vagary.

But yet another piece of napery cried out to me, "The Jew is risen." This was the head-tire which I had seen upon his brow the night of his arrest, a piece of finest silk with brightly-coloured border. In the house of Annas I saw him bestow it upon the younger of the two men now in the tomb like a keepsake. When we took the body from the cross this same youth produced the head-tire and reverently bound it on the thorn-ridden brow. So it went into the tomb with him, and in truth, here it now lay neatly folded on the shelf of the crypt, its silken binding cord beside it. Since the world was fluid fire what grave-robber ever stopped to fold a head-tire? Write that down on the first