The hands snatching at him as he passed tore his garments from his back, so he ran off the road naked; and the gorge, in keeping of the friendly darkness, darker there than elsewhere, received him safe.
Reclaiming his handkerchief and outer garments from the orchard wall, he followed back to the city gate; thence he went to the khan, and on the good horse rode to the tents of his people out by the Tombs of the Kings.
As he rode, he promised himself to see the Nazarene on the morrow--promised it, not knowing that the unfriended man was taken straightway to the house of Hannas to be tried that night.
The heart the young man carried to his couch beat so heavily he could not sleep; for now clearly his renewed Judean kingdom resolved itself into what it was--only a dream.

It is bad enough to see our castles overthrown one after another with an interval between in which to recover from the shock, or at least let the echoes of the fall die away; but when they go altogether--go as ships sink, as houses tumble in earthquakes--the spirits which endure it calmly are made of stuffs sterner than common, and Ben-Hur's was not of them.

Through vistas in the future, he began to catch glimpses of a life serenely beautiful, with a home instead of a palace of state, and Esther its mistress.

Again and again through the leaden-footed hours of the night he saw the villa by Misenum, and with his little countrywoman strolled through the garden, and rested in the panelled atrium; overhead the Neapolitan sky, at their feet the sunniest of sun-lands and the bluest of bays.
In plainest speech, he was entering upon a crisis with which to-morrow and the Nazarene will have everything to do..