On the rising ground beyond the
Damascus gate he halted and looked back at the glorious city with her
crowded streets, her mighty towers, her luxurious palaces, and her
world-famed temple that dominated all, which from here seemed as a
mountain covered with snow and crowned with glittering gold.
"I will rule there when the Romans have been driven out," he said to
himself, for already Caleb had grown very ambitious. Indeed, the wealth
and the place that had come to him so suddenly, with which many men
would have been satisfied, did but serve to increase his appetite
for power, fame, and all good things. To him this money was but a
stepping-stone to greater fortunes.
Caleb was journeying to Tyre to take possession of his house there,
which the Roman commander of the district had been bidden to hand over
to him. Also he had another object. At Tyre dwelt the old Jew, Benoni,
who was Miriam's grandfather, as he had discovered years before; for
when they were still children together she had told him all her story.
This Benoni, for reasons of his own, he desired to see.
On a certain afternoon in one of the palaces of Tyre a man might have
been sitting in a long portico, or verandah as we should call it,
which overlooked the Mediterranean, whose blue waters lapped the
straight-scarped rock below--for this house was in the island city, not
in that of the mainland where most of the rich Syrians dwelt.
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