"Faith and love and purity on the throne of the Herods," cried Martha. "Ah, only Jehovah can bring such a thing as that to pass!"
"Are you going to stay at home now, father?" asked Jesse, anxiously.
"No, my son. I must go on the morrow to carry my report to the Master, of the reception we have had in every town. But I will soon be back again to the Feast of Tabernacles."
"Carry with you our earnest prayer that the Master will abide with us when He comes again to Bethany," said Martha, as her guests departed. "No one is so welcome in our home, as the friend of our brother Lazarus."
The preparation for the Feast of the Tabernacles had begun. "I am going to take the children to the city with me to-day!" said Reuben, one morning, "to see the big booth I am having built. It will hold all our family, and as many friends as may care to share it with us."
Jesse was charmed with the great tent of green boughs.
"I wish I could have been one of the children that Moses led up out of Egypt," he said, with a sigh.
"So's I could have wandered around for forty years, living in a tent like this. How good it smells, and how pretty it is! I wish you and grandmother would live here all the time!"
The next day Phineas joined them. It was a happy family that gathered in the leafy booth for a week of out-door rejoicing in the cool autumn time.
"I know not," answered her husband. "He sent us on before."
"Will He be here, I wonder?" she asked, and that question was on nearly every lip in Jerusalem.
"Will He be here?" asked the throngs of pilgrims who had heard of His miracles, and longed to see the man who could do such marvellous things.
"Will He be here?" whispered the scribes to the Pharisees. "Let Him beware!"
"Will He be here?" muttered Caiaphas the High Priest. "Then better one man should die, than that the whole community perish."
The sight that dazzled the eyes of the children that first evening of the week, was like fairyland; a blaze of lanterns and torches lit up the whole city.
In the Court of the Women, in the Temple, all the golden lamps were lit, twinkling and burning like countless stars.
On the steps that separated this court from the next one, stood three thousand singers, the sons and daughters of the tribe of Levi. Two priests stood at the top of the steps, and as each gave the signal on a great silver trumpet, the burst of song that went up from the vast choir seemed to shake the very heavens. Harps and psalters and flutes swelled with the rolling waves of the organ's melody. To the sound of this music, men marched with flaming torches in their hands, and the marching and a weird torch-dance were kept up until the gates of the Temple closed.