Through these opened gates, in the darkness of the night, stole in some Samaritans, carrying under their robes dead men's bones and bits of dead men's bodies, and these they strewed up and down the cloisters of the temple, to make them defiled and unclean.
But perhaps the most trying thing which the Samaritans did was to put a stop to a very old and very favourite custom of the Jews.

For a long time those Jews who lived in Jerusalem had been accustomed to let their brethren in Babylon know the very time that the Passover moon rose in Jerusalem, so that they and their absent friends might keep the feast together at the very same time.

They did this in a very curious and interesting way.

As soon as the watchers on the Mount of Olives saw the moon rising, they lighted a beacon fire, other fires were already prepared on a succession of hilltops, reaching all the way from Jerusalem to Babylon.

As soon as the light was seen on Olivet the next fire was lighted, and then the next, and the next, till in a very short time those Jews who sat by the waters of Babylon saw the signal, and joined in the Passover rejoicing with their friends hundreds of miles away in Jerusalem.