was escaping him; while Pontius Pilate was secretly glad, both at the disappearance of the Christ and the discomfiture of the wily Caiaphas.
"Where is now the courage of thy Nazarene?" Caiaphas had asked the Procurator at the Sanhedrim; and, in the same taunting tone, Pilate had answered:
"Where is now thy Victim?"
The hours were few in which Mary and Martha were allowed to sit and mourn their dead in peace. Of a noble and respected family, as the wealthy ruler had been, it was impossible that his death should not cause some stir, for all that his recent leaning towards the tenets of the Nazarene had caused him to be looked upon of late with some suspicion. Accordingly great interest was taken in the promised presence at the funeral of several representatives of the different sects who suspected or dreaded that Lazarus might not be really dead; and Caiaphas had prevailed on the jackal Annas to be present.
"We can trust none," he had said, "and this Nazarene may so bewitch the people that they may fear to tell us the truth. It must be thou or I, for I would trust to no man's eyes or ears or tongue in this affair; and it would look better that he that was High Priest were there than that he that is; for thou wouldst be deserting no office and wasting no time if, peradventure, thou wert walking in the olive groves by Bethany at eventide, when the funeral procession was approaching."
Caiaphas had not seen fit to tell his father-in-law of his midnight journey to Bethany with Nicodemus,
