Thus, fierce and brave to the last, died Benoni the Jew.
Again Miriam fainted, again to be awakened. The door that led from
the gate chambers to its roof burst open and through it sped a figure
bare-headed and dishevelled, his torn raiment black with blood and
smoke. Staring at him, Miriam knew the man who Simeon--yes, Simeon,
her cruel judge, who had doomed her to this dreadful end. After him,
gripping his robe indeed, came a Roman officer, a stout man of middle
age, with a weather-beaten kindly face, which in some dim way seemed to
be familiar to her, and after him again, six soldiers.
"Hold him!" he panted. "We must have one of them to show if only that
the people may know what a live Jew is like," and the officer tugged so
fiercely at the robe that in his struggles to be free, for he also hoped
to die by casting himself from the gateway tower, Simeon fell down.
Next instant the soldiers were on him and held him fast. Then it was for
the first time that the captain caught sight of Miriam crouched at the
foot of her pillar.
"Why," he said, "I had forgotten. That is the girl whom we saw yesterday
from the Court of Women and whom we have orders to save. Is the poor
thing dead?"
Miriam lifted her wan face and looked at him.
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