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Updated: June 7, 2025
I had counted them again and again; I had stolen across their gentle faces and brought them pleasant dreams of green pastures and of cool water-brooks. I had kissed old Benoni, too, as he lay slumbering there; and in his dreams he seemed to see Israel's King come upon earth, and in his dreams he murmured the promised Messiah's name. "'Ah, is it you, little moonbeam? quoth the violets.
As the words left his lips footsteps were heard, and Benoni appeared. "Friend Caleb," he said, "we await you. Why, Miriam, what do you here? To your chamber, girl. Affairs are afoot in which women should have no part." "Yet as I fear, grandfather, women will have to bear the burden," answered Miriam. Then, bowing to Caleb, she turned and left them.
"Caro mio," answered Nino, "we must be safe at the top of the pass before we rest. We were so unfortunate as to wake his excellency the Baron Benoni out of some sweet dream or other, and perhaps he is not far behind us." An encounter with the furious Jew was not precisely attractive to me, and I was on my donkey before you could count a score.
Then Benoni rose and rent his robes. "Does not enough blood run through these holy courts?" he asked, "that you must seek that of the innocent also? What is your oath? To do justice and to convict only upon clear, unshaken testimony. Where is this testimony? What is there to show that the girl Miriam had any dealings with this Marcus, whom she had not seen for years?
I am the son of Hilliel, who perished many years ago in Jerusalem. You may have heard his story and mine." "Yes," answered Benoni scanning his visitor, "I knew Hilliel a clever man, but one who fell into a trap at last, and I see that you are his son. Your face proves it; indeed, it might be Hilliel who stands before me."
As it chanced, at the moment they were in the centre of an open space that once had been covered with houses but was now cumbered with hundreds of blackened and tottering walls, for fire had devoured them. "It is the men of John who attack us," cried a voice, whereon, moved by a common impulse, the little band turned and fled for shelter among the ruined houses; yes, even Caleb and Benoni fled.
"Hold your hand and take this woman with you to the Temple, there to be tried by her grandfather, Benoni, and the other judges of the Sanhedrim. They have means to cause the most obstinate to speak, whereas death seals the lips forever. Swift, now, swift, for already they are fighting on the market-place."
"I am sure," answered Nehushta, "and for this service my mistress here will give you a bill for any reasonable sum drawn upon her father." "Yes, but the question is will he honour it? Benoni is a prejudiced man, a very prejudiced man, a Jew of the Jew, who does not like Christians." "I think that he will honour it, I believe that he will honour it; but that risk is yours.
After the usual questions and precautions, a brother was admitted who informed them that there had arrived in the village, at the head of a considerable retinue, Benoni, the Jewish merchant of Tyre. He stated that he desired speech with them on the subject of his granddaughter Miriam, who, he learned, was, or had been recently, in their charge.
As it chanced their ship was not ready, so they camped on the outskirts of Paleotyrus, and by a strange accident in that very garden which had been the property of Benoni. This place they reached after sunset one evening and set up their tents, that of Miriam and the old slave-woman being placed on the seashore next to the tent of her protector.
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