Against him alone, the gigantic southeast turret looked down in the self-containment of a hill.

And he thought, cunning is so easily baffled; and God, always the last resort of the helpless--God is sometimes so slow to act! In doubt and misgiving, he turned into the street in front of the Tower, and followed it slowly on to the west.
Over in Bezetha he knew there was a khan, where it was his intention to seek lodging while in the city; but just now he could not resist the impulse to go home.

His heart drew him that way.
The old formal salutation which he received from the few people who passed him had never sounded so pleasantly.

Presently, all the eastern sky began to silver and shine, and objects before invisible in the west--chiefly the tall towers on Mount Zion--emerged as from a shadowy depth, and put on spectral distinctness, floating, as it were, above the yawning blackness of the valley below, very castles in the air.
He came, at length, to his father's house.
Of those who read this page, some there will be to divine his feelings without prompting.

They are such as had happy homes in their youth, no matter how far that may have been back in time--homes which are now the starting-points of all recollection; paradises from which they went forth in tears, and which they would now return to, if they could, as little children; places of laughter and singing, and associations dearer than any or all the triumphs of after-life.
At the gate on the north side of the old house Ben-Hur stopped.
In the corners the wax used in the sealing-up was still plainly seen, and across the valves was the board with the inscription-- "THIS IS THE PROPERTY OF THE EMPEROR." Nobody had gone in or out the gate since the dreadful day of the separation.