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I groaned aloud drinking it, feeling the searing heat of it, so unlike to any human blood With each slow beat of his powerful heart there cae of it, until , and the sound of his heart grew louder, ever louder, and a reddish shireat swirling dust

A wretched dreary din rose slowly out of nothingness, co ht, and old and full of rank and cos, of sweat and filth and death The din was voices crying out, and echoing up the close and grimy walls Voices crowded upon voices, taunts and jeers and cries of horror, and gruff riffs of foul indifferent gossip rushing over the e and alarm

Against sweating bodies I was pressed, struggling, the slanting sun burning on my outstretched arue hollered and wailed in et ever closer to the source of all the wet and ugly commotion that swamped me and tried to hold me back

It seeh-skinnedelbows atonhter, and suddenly, as if by decree, the crowd parted, and I beheld the lurid masterpiece itself

He stood in His torn and bloody white robe, this very Figure whose Face I??d seen imprinted into the fibers of the Veil Arms bound up with thick uneven iron chains to the heavy and monstrous crossbea down on either side of His bruised and lacerated face The blood fro eyes

He looked at me, quite startled, even faintly aaze as if the multitude didn't surround Him, and a whip did not crack over His very back and then His bowed head He stared past the tangle of his clotted hair and fro lids

"Lord!" I cried

I must have reached out for Him, for those were my hands,to reach His Face

"Lord!" I cried again

And back He stared atfro with blood

Suddenly a fierce and terrible blow struck ht Before my eyes it was the very measure of all that I could possibly see-His soiled and broken skin, the wetted, darkened tangle of His eyelashes, the great bright orbs of His dark-pupiled eyes

Closer and closer it ca down and into His thick eyebrows, and dripping down His gaunt cheeks His h at first and then a dull rising breath that grew louder and louder as His Face beca its very linea colors, the sound now a positive and deafening roar

In terror, I cried out I was thrust back Yet even as I saw His faure and the ancient fraer and larger and utterly indistinct and seeain to bear down on me, and then suddenly to suffocate all ht

I screahtless, unable to draw breath

I screamed as I??ve never in all my miserable years screamed, the scream so loud that it shut out the roar that filledinescapable mass that had been His Face