He had seen the Saviour a child in a manger, and was prepared by his faith for the rude and simple in connection with the Divine reappearance.

So he kept his seat, his hands crossed upon his breast, his lips moving in prayer.
He was not expecting a king.
In this time of such interest to the new-comers, and in which they were so differently moved, another man had been sitting by himself on a stone at the edge of the river, thinking yet, probably, of the sermon he had been hearing.

Now, however, he arose, and walked slowly up from the shore, in a course to take him across the line the Nazarite was pursuing and bring him near the camel.
And the two--the preacher and the stranger--kept on until they came, the former within twenty yards of the animal, the latter within ten feet.

Then the preacher stopped, and flung the hair from his eyes, looked at the stranger, threw his hands up as a signal to all the people in sight; and they also stopped, each in the pose of a listener; and when the hush was perfect, slowly the staff in the Nazarite's right hand came down and pointed to the stranger.
All those who before were but listeners became watchers also.
At the same instant, under the same impulse, Balthasar and Ben-Hur fixed their gaze upon the man pointed out, and both took the same impression, only in different degree.

He was moving slowly towards them in a clear space a little to their front, a form slightly above the average in stature, and slender, even delicate.