“They led him away to crucify him.”—Mark.  
“There followed him a great company of ... women, who also bewailed him.”—Luke.
Gabriel: “Hail, highly favored among women blessed!”
Mary: This is my favored lot!
My exaltation to affliction high!
—Milton.
 
For many days Sir Charleroy and Miriamne tarried at Acre, the latter seeking to banish repining on account of him whom she had sent away at the behest of conscience, by ministries for her parent. With alacrity she joined the tours of her knightly father, visiting the scenes where he once battled, listening, from time to time, with unaffected delight, to his recitals. The tides of fanatical conquests had wrought few changes on the face of the city, and the realism of those days of siege, of the stern compacts made in the last hours of the Crusaders, the solemn religious services before the last battle, the death struggle and the disordered retreat, was complete. The excitement of revived memories seemed to lift up the knight from the syncope of ill health. This encouraged the maiden to solicit the reviews and recitals of her father. The night before their departure from Acre, as determined, the knight and his daughter stood together contemplating the sacred pile[420] which stood in the moonlight and shadows, mostly in shadows. The soldier of fortune, having told its story over and over, was now silent, dreaming of the past.
 
“Selamet!”
 
They both started, for the voice was like one from the tomb, none but themselves being apparent.
 
“I’m afraid here; let’s be going, father,” whispered Miriamne, essaying to withdraw.
 
Thereupon there glided out of the shadows a stately form who, drawing near to the father and daughter, spoke:
 
“Fear not, lady! Knight, they can not be foes who court kindred memories and hope of like colors at the same shrine!”
 
“Thou speakest with Christian allusions the ‘peace’ word of the Turk.”
 
“I wear the Turkish ‘selamet,’ as I do this Turkish harness, a loathed necessity, but without; the peace I pray and feel is the mystic inner peace.”
 
“As a Christian?”
 
“Yea; nor do I fear confession, since I am speaking to those who abhor the Crescent.”
 
“A pious Jew would as soon adhere to Astarte with her orgies as to bow to the mooned-crown she wore.”
 
“Jews? No, not Jews! Such would not sooner run from the moon-mark than they would from the shadows which fall down about you from yon grand and awful sign.”
 
The speaker pointed to the crossed spire above, as he spoke.
 
“No more avoidance; we are brethren. I’m Sir Charleroy de Griffin, Teutonic knight.”
 
“And not unknown. The story of thy valor, even[421] here, lives in the bosoms of true companions. I’m a Knight Hospitaler of Rhodes, yet fameless.”
 
The two men came closely together; there were a few secret tests. The Hospitaler said:
 
“In hoc signo vinces!”
 
Sir Charleroy crossed his feet, stretched out his arms and murmured something heard only by his comrade. It made the other’s eyes lighten with pleasure.
 
To Miriamne it was a dumb show; but the tokens given and received were useful to pilgrims in those perilous times.
 
“Whither, Sir Charleroy?”
 
“To-morrow, toward Joppa.”
 
“So, ho! By interpretation, The Watch-tower of Joy. From thence one may see Jerusalem! And then?”
 
“And then? God knows where! A useless life, like mine, is ever aimless.”
 
“No, no, father!” interrupted the daughter; “not useless. No life that God prolongs is useless.”
 
“True; the girl is right, Teuton. Aspiration will cure thee, since it’s the mother of immortality. I go to Joppa also.”
 
“They say, Hospitaler, its sea-side is full wild; its reefs like barking Scylla and Charybdis? I hope it may be so; I’d like a terrible uproar.”
 
“The sea is the emblem of change; from calm to weary moan, to howling terrors and back again.”
 
“But the people? They say Joppa’s outside is fine, naturally, though, within, the life of its people is mean, colorless; a charnel-house whose activity is that of grave worms!” And Sir Charleroy shuddered with disgust at his own figure.
 
“I think the legend of Andromeda, said to have[422] been chained to Joppa’s sea-crags for a season, to be persecuted by a serpent, then freed, prophetic. Joppa may have a future.”
 
“How?”
 
“Oh, the chained maiden was boasted by her fond mother as more beautiful than Neptune’s Nereids, hence the persecution. Crescent faiths have been the persecutors of Joppa and all the other beautiful Andromedas of this land.”
 
“And the chains are riveted?”
 
“No, not certainly. There was, in the myth, a Perseus of winged feet, having a helmet that made invisible and a sickle from Minerva, goddess of wisdom; he slew the serpent, then wed the victim.”
 
“Now the key, further.”
 
“When wrongs overwhelm all, women suffer most; but time brings their deliverance.”
 
“The myths are as full of women as the women full of myths!” exclaimed Sir Charleroy.
 
“But Andromeda, the woman, was blameless!”
 
“Yet it’s strange that in all men’s fightings, as in their religions, constantly the woman appears,” replies Sir Charleroy.
 
“I’d have thee think, knight, of the legend; it tells how men, in those dark times, tied their faith to the sure conviction that right would triumph, wrong be slain, and the martyrs at last go up among the stars. See how they placed their Andromeda in the constellation now above us. Perseus was a Christian, or rather a Christian was a Perseus.”
 
“Now, thou art merry!”
 
“No; I mean St. Peter; he was a Perseus. Hearken to the word:
 
[423]
 
“‘Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha: this woman was full of good works and alms-deeds.
 
“‘And it came to pass that she died.
 
“‘The disciples sent unto Peter two men, desiring him that he would not delay to come to them.
 
“‘When he was come, they brought him into the upper chamber: and all the widows stood by him weeping, and showing the coats and garments which she made, while she was with them.
 
“‘But Peter put them all forth, and kneeled down, and prayed; and turning him to the body, said, Tabitha, arise. And she opened her eyes: and when she saw Peter, she sat up.
 
“‘And he gave her his hand, and lifted her up; and when he had called the saints and widows, he presented her alive.
 
“‘And it was known throughout all Joppa; and many believed in the Lord.’”
 
“Why, Hospitaler, thou hast a memory like an elephant or an emperor and a tongue like a sacrist!”
 
“Well, the time for swords being past I have taken to books; their leaves are wings. The world will be conquered yet by the words of the Swordless King.”
 
“And thou wouldst liken Tabitha to Andromeda?”
 
“Wasn’t she a real beauty, as her name is interpreted? Beautiful old soul! She robed the poor! Peter bringing her to the truth of the new life smote the dragon at Joppa, as a very Perseus.”
 
“A woman! a woman, again leading the army of salvation!”
 
“After that Peter slept on the house top of Simon the Tanner, and God gave him the vision of Jew and[424] Gentile, bond and free, rich and poor; all, as one family coming into the benign rays of the Sun whose wings are full of healing.”
 
“And will that day come, Sir Hospitaler? I’m feeling almost a frenzy of desire for it!”
 
“Surely as the morning to Acre; but we must hie homeward; good-night; I’ll see you at the quay to-morrow.”
 
From Acre, Miriamne and her father, next day, set sail. The companions on the journey from Acre by Joppa arrived at Jerusalem, there to separate soon, for Miriamne, with every ingenious device, urged her father forward. Bozrah was constantly uppermost in her mind.
 
“We part, Sir Charleroy, to-morrow?” said the Hospitaler.
 
“If thou dost elect to stay in sad Jerusalem, surely.
 
“Yes; I’d go mad here from doing nothing but wrestling with my thoughts. In fact, I guess I’d go mad anywhere, if long there. I think, sometimes, that my mind’s in a whirlpool, moving not like others; yet, round and round in some consistency, carrying its befooling creeds, hopes, dreams, visions, phantasmagoria in a pretty fair march. I’m sure, more than sure, that if I once stopped moving, my brain would rest like a house after a land-slide, tilted over, while all the things in the whirlpool would drift about in hopeless confusion.”
 
“Thou dost talk like a physician, gone mad with philosophy!”
 
“No doubt of it; that’s all because I’ve been idling here a month; a week longer and God knows who could set me going again, rightly.”
 
[425]
 
Then the knight laughed merrily; very merrily, in fact, for a man who had trained himself to morbidness. The Hospitaler replied:
 
“I see nothing for me beyond the Holy City and its historic surrounds. I’m training myself to proclaim God’s kingdom and must begin at that pre-eminent, world over-looking point, Jerusalem.”
 
“But there are no schools to fit one there?”
 
“The most informing and man-expanding on earth; the deathless examples of the worthies; best studied where they lived their mightful living. I go now to Golgotha.”
 
“Golgotha? ‘The Place of the Skull?’”
 
“Even so, sometimes called the Valley of Jehosaphat.”
 
Sir Charleroy rubbed his head as one well puzzled, and was silent.
 
“Oh, knight, thou hast forgotten the goings forward of Ezekiel’s mind, prophetically. It was in Kidron, the Golgotha Valley, that he had the vision of the dry bones. Let me read:
 
“‘Behold, there were very many bones in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry.
 
“‘And He said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest.
 
“‘Again He said unto me, Prophesy;
 
“‘Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live:
 
“‘As I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone.
 
“‘The sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them.
 
[426]
 
“‘Then said he unto me, say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God; come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.
 
“‘So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.’”
 
“And now, soldier, turned exegete, tell me what thou dost make of the strange phantasm?”
 
“That God will work in this world a marvelous transformation; those living-dead, all around us and beyond, to the ends of the earth, shall stand in new life. The scene is laid to be in this Kidron valley, to bring all minds to the ‘Light of the World,’ who passed in painful triumph along it, even unto Calvary.”
 
“But this may not be so, yet it so seems?”
 
“Hearken again to the prophet’s happy ending:
 
“‘Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them: and I will place them, and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore.
 
“‘My tabernacle also shall be with them: yea, I will be their God, and they shall be my people.’
 
“All this,” continued the Hospitaler, “is what is to come, is coming. The dawn of this day began when Jesus passed over Kidron!”
 
“And yet, Rhodes, I’m doubtful. Do not the correspondences remote, mislead thee?”
 
“If a crusade leader sent a summons like this wouldst thou respond, trusting? ‘Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand?’”
 
“The Hospitaler knows I would.”
 
[427]
 
“Well; God by His Prophet-Herald, Joel, so alarms the nations. And more, we have a broader summons,” and the preacher soldier read again:
 
“‘Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.
 
“‘Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehosaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about.
 
“‘Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe.
 
“‘The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining.
 
“‘The Lord also shall roar out of Zion, and utter His voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake: but the Lord will be the hope of His people, and the strength of the children of Israel.
 
“‘So shall ye know that I am the Lord your God dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain.
 
“‘Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong.’”
 
Then the Hospitaler closed his eyes, turned his face upward as in prayer, and began speaking like unto one in a rapture or trance:
 
“When souls would measure themselves for judgment, they must stand by the scenes wrought out by Him that died for men; just hereabouts, when the last judgment comes, the multitudes of earth, tried by the measure of the God-man, will be brought face t............