Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3CHAPTER II. WHO STOPS THE WAY ? With grunt and slouch the two camels shambled along the basalt-paved causeway, which, circling the hill of Moreh, swung round to Nain and Endor, and then wound northward to Tiberias and the Galilee hills. To those solemn and sulky beasts of burden it mattered little who was lord in the promised land, or whether the Messias had indeed appeared. From earliest ages, come Canaanite or Midianite, come Hebrew, Syrian, or Roman, the master had ever been the master still, and work was always the same wearying, load-carrying drudge, whosoever sat in the land as ruler and as lord. But, behind them, their driver and their master strode ?a pondering, wavering man. Indifferent as he seemed, the words of Juda Bar-Simon had pierced clear through his listlessness and unconcern. Did the man speak truth ? Was there a ray of hope ? Could it be possible that this hard, never-ending grind for an every-day existence might really be changed for something worth the living ? He was a prince?by ancestry and by right a prince in Israel. What matter that for ages his house had been in shadow; that all his days his mother had been but a drudge, and he but a camel-driver?a seller of leeks and cucumbers ? Many another of the great housesof Israel had fallen to the dust. Many another prince of the land was but little better than a slave. And this Messias ! Could it be as the stranger by the Wells of Harod had said?was the hour of Israel’s deliverance at hand ? They had waited for it long. This, too, might be but a fresh disappointment. Was it wise to risk a new endeavor where all the rest had failed ? Was it not better to quietly accept, questioning nothing, attempting nothing ? Rome was all powerful; even a Messias might not succeed. He who casts a spear at the king does but die, himself, upo…
