“’Tis well thought of, Judas. Lead the way, and I follow;” and he clasped his brother’s hand.

The captain then developed his plan, which, when examined, seemed less audacious than it had appeared at first sight. It was to be a surprise, and the very unlikelihood of the attempt made its success more probable. Modin was not occupied by a garrison, and the townsfolk, even if their goodwill could not be counted on, would scarcely venture to resist. Only it would be necessary to act before any rumour of their intention could get about, and, the funeral march once begun, to hasten it to a completion as much as possible.

Before dawn the procession started. The body, in its rude coffin of wood, was placed upon a bier, thirty bearers taking it in turns to carry it. The thirty were divided into five relays of six, one of the sons of the dead being always among those who performed the duty. With the exception of a small force which was left for the protection of the women and children, all the fighting men of the settlement accompanied the body. In spite of the efforts which had been made to procure or manufacture arms, they were still but poorly equipped. Of military display, of the “pomp and circumstance of glorious war,” there was absolutely nothing. But the solid qualities of endurance and courage could be seen in their sinewy forms and resolute faces. To an observer who could look below the surface that squalid array had in it the capacity for achieving an heroic success.

The offender had been caught, so to speak, red-handed, and some voices were raised to demand his instant execution. But the officer in command of the detachment interposed. In any case he would have objected to a proceeding of which Judas would certainly have disapproved, and he had besides a certain kindness for Benjamin, of whose courage and dexterity he had been more than once a witness. Accordingly the offender was put under close arrest, and the army resumed its march.

When the army reached Modin no attempt was made to interfere with its proceedings. Our old acquaintance, Cleon, had been sent to replace the commissioner killed when Mattathias raised the standard of revolt, and Cleon was far too careful of himself to risk his safety in any foolhardy struggle against superior strength. When the body of armed men was first seen approaching the town, he had supposed that its object was to possess itself of any money, arms, or provisions that might be found in the place. A nearer view showed the funeral procession, and one of the townspeople was acute enough to guess the real purpose of the expedition. Cleon’s resolve was at once taken. He would make the best of circumstances which he could not control. Accordingly he went out of the town with a flag of truce in his hand, and meeting the vanguard of the approaching array, demanded an interview with its leader.

He was brought into the presence of Judas.

“May I ask,” he said, “the purpose of your coming?”

“We are come to bury Mattathias, son of Asmon, in the sepulchre of his fathers,” was the brief reply.

“And you, sir,” continued the Greek, with elaborate courtesy, “may I ask to whom I am speaking?”

“I am Judas, son of Mattathias.”

“Allow me, then,” answered Cleon, “to express my sympathy with you in the loss of so renowned a father, once, I believe, a distinguished citizen of this place, and to assure you that you will meet with no molestation in whatever honours you may see fit to render to his memory. I would myself willingly attend the obsequies, did I suppose that my presence would be welcome.”

“We thank you, sir,” said Judas, who was inwardly chafing at this hypocritical politeness, but disdained to show his feelings; “we would sooner be alone.”

Cleon saluted and withdrew.

When the cave had been closed again John, as the eldest son of the deceased, spoke a few words to the army.

“We have buried our dead,” he said, “out of our sight; but his memory lives and will live among us. Let us be true and faithful as he was, that we may be with him when he shall rise again at the last day, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the supper of the people of God. Meanwhile let us follow and obey him whom with his last breath he named as his successor. Long live Judas, son of Mattathias, son of Asmon, the captain of the host of the Lord!”

And all the army shouted their approval.

Cleon had followed up his courtesies by an invitation addressed to Judas and his principal officers, in which he begged the honour of their company at a meal. Judas declined the invitation, but intimated that he would gladly purchase a supply of corn. The commissioner, well aware that his guests could take by force anything that was refused to them, at once acceded to the request, and Micah was selected, on account of his familiarity with the Greek language, to conduct the transaction.

The details of the business arranged with the commissioner’s secretary, Micah received a message from the great man himself, begging for the pleasure of an interview.

“What!” cried Cleon, affecting a surprise which he did not really feel, “is this my old friend Menander whom I see?”

“My name is Micah,” said the Jew, not without a feeling of disgust and shame as his mind reverted to the past.

“As you please,” said Cleon. “By whatever name you may please to call yourself, I hope that we shall always be good friends. But tell me, what is the meaning of this disguise?”

“I know not what you mean by disguise.”

“I mean these rags, which a scarecrow would hardly condescend to wear; that battered helmet, which looks as if the boys had been kicking it for a month about the market-place; that deplorably shabby sword, which even a rag-and-bone man would be ashamed to hang up in his shop. Is this the elegant Menander—I beg your pardon, the elegant Micah, who was once the very pink of neatness and fashion?”

“Why, what madness is this? What have you got to live for? How can you support existence among this deplorable crew of beggars and outlaws, with not a man among them, I will warrant, who has the least taste of culture, or the faintest tincture of art?”

“These ‘beggars and outlaws,’ as you call them, are the soldiers of the Lord; and you will find that they are enemies not to be despised, that these battered helmets can turn a blow, and these jagged swords can deal one that will make its way through all your finery.”

“But, my dear friend—I may call you so, I suppose, in spite of any little difference of opinion there may be between us?”

The Jew made no motion of assent.

“Your gifts be to yourself. Nay, Cleon,” he soon went on to say, in a softer tone, “I would not speak harshly to you for the sake of old kindnesses which I doubt not you meant well in showing me. But be sure that I am in earnest. The old things are hateful to me. I have other desires, other hopes; and if they are not satisfied, not fulfilled, I can at least die for them.”

“Die for them, indeed! That, my dear Micah, is only too likely, and die, I am afraid, in an exceedingly unpleasant way. It is simple madness to suppose that a crowd of ragamuffins, under a general—Apollo save the mark!—who has never seen a battle, can stand against the troops of the King. You used to be a very good fellow, Menander or Micah, or whatever you call yourself, but, as sure as you are sitting there, if you go on in this mad fashion, I shall have the pain of seeing you some day hanging on a cross.”

At the sound of the word the young Jew started as if he had been stabbed. It opened the way for a flood of memories which, for a while, carried him out of himself. When he could command himself sufficiently to speak, he burst out—

The expedition returned to the mountains without mishap.

It was on the eve of the departure of the patriot army, when Seraiah might have been seen making his way back from a conference of the chiefs to the cave which served him as a dwelling. He was now recovering from his wound, but he was still too weak to support the fatigues of a march. Accordingly Judas had left him in command of the little garrison, scarcely, indeed, containing one able-bodied man, which was to protect the encampment. When he reached his home he found his nieces, Miriam and Judith, sitting with his wife, and watching the infant that was slumbering by her side.

“See,” said Judith, as the child smiled in his sleep, “his angel is whispering to him. Oh, uncle, have you ever seen the angel?”

She prattled on without waiting for an answer. “Father sees angels, and they bring him words from mother, where she is in Paradise. And, do you know, uncle, last night he had a wonderful dream about a sword? He told it to us this morning. He often tells us his dreams. Sometimes he seems as if he were talking to mother; and he says that Miriam is so like her.”

“Well, Judith, and what was the dream?” said Ruth.

“And you will not mind taking care of the women and children, dear husband?” said Ruth.

“I should be ungrateful indeed if I did,” said Seraiah, as he kissed her.

Meanwhile the excitement in the camp had risen to fever heat. Scouts had come racing in at headlong speed with tidings that the enemy’s army had started from Jerusalem, and that it numbered not less than twelve thousand regular troops, well-equipped, and furnished with a formidable supply of the engines of war. The patriots were in that state of exaltation in which men make little of the numbers opposed to them, and the disparity of forces roused no apprehensions. If any such were felt they gave way to rage when the messengers added that the hated Apollonius himself was in command of the hostile army.

Azariah and Micah were among a small company of chiefs who were standing outside the tent of Judas, and were discussing the prospects of the war.

“The curse of God light upon him!” cried Azariah. “Surely He will so order it that I may smite him down on the field of battle, and avenge the innocent blood! Surely the blood of my wife and my child cries against him from the earth!”

“Nay, brother,” broke in Micah, “the task of the avenger of blood lies upon me, for I am next-of-kin to Hannah.”

“Surely,” replied Azariah, with some heat, “there is no kinship so close as the tie which binds husband to wife! ’Tis I that should be Hannah’s avenger of blood.”

“My brothers,” broke in the voice of Judas, who appeared in the door of his tent, “you think too much of your private wrongs. Great they are, I know—none greater. But is there one soldier in this army that has not lost wife, or child, or father, or brother by the hand of this evil man? We will go, one and all, as avengers of blood, and the Lord will deliver him into the hands of him whom He shall choose.”

Next day the army set out. On the evening of the second day they came in sight of the forces of Apollonius. Some of the more fiery spirits were for an instant attack, but the prudence of Judas, which was not less conspicuous than his daring, restrained them. His men were wearied with a long day’s march, and they wanted food. And he himself had not had time to reconnoitre the enemy’s position or receive any intelligence from his scouts.

The Greek line broke almost at once, and the chief danger now was that the conquerors might press on too eagerly. The Greeks were not an undisciplined mob which could be treated with contempt. Some of them, at least, were veteran soldiers, in whom the sense of discipline was an instinct, and who, if not very enthusiastic in the cause for which they were fighting, were perfectly well aware that their best chance of personal safety was to be found in keeping together and holding their ground. Judas, in whom native genius seemed to supply the want of experience, appreciated the enemy with whom he had to deal, and kept his own men well in hand, though he was careful not unduly to check their courage.

The fortune of the day continued to declare in favour of the patriots; but Apollonius himself, surrounded by a picked force of mercenaries, still held his ground. Shortly after noon Azariah and Micah, who had kept close together during the battle, and had both performed prodigies of valour, gathering a company of their immediate followers, made a determined rush in his direction. The bodyguard, terrified by the fierceness of this onset, wavered and fled, leaving but three or four faithful attendants, who refused to leave their commander.

The Greek recognized Azariah, and called to him by his name. “Azariah, if you think that I have wronged you, I do not refuse you the opportunity of revenge. Come out from your companions, and I will meet you alone. You are a brave man, and would not take a soldier at unfair odds.”

Azariah did not deign to answer; but one of his comrades replied, “Dog of a heathen! you forget where you are. We are not contending in your foolish games: we are the avengers of blood—the innocent blood which you have shed; and we will slay you as men slay a venomous snake. Such equity as you have dealt to others, we will show to you. Was it in fair fight that you slew women and children?”

“Silence, blasphemer!” cried Azariah, as he whirled his sword over his head.

It was not the almost worthless weapon, with its dented edge and broken hilt, that he had carried into the battle. Early in the day he had cut down a Greek officer, and taken the sword of the dead man in exchange for his own.

As he spoke he beckoned to his countrymen. They stood back, even Micah recognizing the right of the husband to strike the first blow at the murderer of his wife.

Apollonius raised his sword to parry the stroke which he expected to be aimed at his head. With a rapid change of movement his adversary changed the blow into a thrust, and drove the point of his weapon through the Greek’s heart.

Azariah was drawing out his weapon from the corpse, when Judas, who had been hastening to the spot not without some hope of himself crossing swords with the hated Apollonius, came up.

“A mighty weapon that!” he exclaimed, as the conqueror wiped the blade on the dead man’s tunic. “Let me take it in my hands.”

He poised it and judged its balance, tried the edge, and then narrowly scanned the markings on the blade.

“Ah!” said he, “how came you by this sword? I had observed”—and indeed his eagle eye noted every detail—“that yours was but a poor weapon, unworthy of your strength, and I wished to find something better for you.”

Azariah told him how he had taken it from a Greek on the field of battle.

“And saw you this?” he went on, pointing to the Holy Name which had been engraved on the blade. “Doubtless this belonged to some Hebrew warrior in time past, for the fashion of the letters is somewhat antique; the heathen whom you slew had taken it, and now the Lord has given it back into the hands of the faithful.”

Azariah then related his dream.

“The angel whom you saw,” said Judas, “was, doubtless, the angel of battle, and the Lord has been faithful, as ever, to His promise.”

He gave back the consecrated sword to Azariah, and took the weapon which was still grasped in the right hand of the dead Apollonius. “With this,” he said, “I will fight as long as I live.” And he broke out into the triumphal chant of the Psalmist—“The ungodly have drawn out the sword, and have bent the bow to cast down the poor and needy. Their sword shall go through their own heart and their bow shall be broken.”

“’Tis everywhere the same,” she thought to herself—“the stronger hunt and devour the weak. The lions roaring after their prey, do seek their meat from God. The lambs and the fawns are their prey, and God gives the helpless, innocent things into their jaws. And will he give us to the jaws of the heathen who are hunting us that they may devour us? Did He deliver the thousand who died that they might not profane His Sabbath? Not so. He suffered them to perish, to be a prey for the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air. ‘Verily our bones lie scattered before the pit, like as when one breaketh and heweth wood upon the earth.’ ”

And then her thoughts travelled to those who were especially close to her heart. Azariah and Micah—where were they? How had it fared with them in the battle? Were they lying on the field of battle with stark faces turned to the stars of heaven, and the vultures preying on their limbs? And she shuddered, and hid her face in the coarse coverlet under which she lay, as if she would shut out the dreadful picture that her thoughts had conjured up before her.

Looking to the head of the pass Ruth could see her husband where he stood at his post of observation, a spot which commanded a distant view of the westward approaches to the encampment. As she watched him she observed him make a signal that indicated that he had to make some important communication. A moment afterwards she could see other men hurrying to the spot. She bade Miriam and Judith, who were always her guests during their father’s absence, watch the still sleeping infant, and made all the haste she could to join her husband. When she reached him she found the little group of watchers straining their eyes as they gazed at a body of armed men that could be seen in the distance. “Who are they? foes or friends?” was the question that was in every heart, though none ventured to put it into words.

As the vanguard of the approaching force came to an eastward turn in the path, a ray of sunshine touched the helmets of the men and made them glitter.

“What is this?” said one of the men. “They went with caps of leather; whence come these helmets of brass and steel?”

A shudder went through the hearts of Ruth and of the other women who by this time had joined her. If the patriots had been overpowered, and these armed men were heathen murderers and ravishers come to wreak their vengeance on those who had been left behind——

“Whence come they?” said Seraiah. “They are the spoils of the heathen.”

Judas at once resolved to repeat the policy which had been found so successful in the conflict with Apollonius. The enemy would soon reach the passes that led into the hill-country of Eastern Palestine; and it was there that he must be met. To allow him to make good this movement without opposition would be to throw away a great advantage. The Jewish commander resolved, accordingly, to dispute the possession of the pass. With a boldness which seemed to some of his followers to verge upon rashness, he left Jerusalem, occupied as it was by a hostile garrison, behind him, and marched westward till he reached the range which looks over the Plain of Sharon to the Great Sea.

Seraiah, who had extorted from the old physician attached to the patriot army an unwilling permission to bear arms, had fallen fainting to the ground, close to the entrance to the pass. Near him lay six or seven Greek corpses. The tide of battle had passed elsewhere, and the place was deserted. This was exactly the opportunity which Benjamin and his associates—since his escape during the expedition to Modin he had gathered about him a small band—had been watching. They issued from their hiding-places among the rocks, and began to search the prostrate bodies for spoil. The first that they came to was a Greek sub-officer, somewhat richly attired. The man was still alive and groaned as they turned him over to get more conveniently at the silver ornaments of his belt. “Curse the villain!” cried Benjamin, as he drove his sword into his side; and when the poor wretch breathed his last, went on, “A brave man might have been left to take his chance, but such cowards as these ’tis positively a good work to despatch. Did you ever see such a scandalous flight?—and they were positively five to one at the very least.”

“Nay, man,” he said, “’tis one of the patriots, and an old friend of mine to boot. Look you after the others, and I will attend to this brave fellow.”

Hastily and with a practised hand he bound up Seraiah’s wound, for the old place had broken out afresh. The injured man, consumed by the thirst that follows the loss of blood, begged for water. Benjamin supplied him with a draught from the bottle which he carried, and followed it up with some rough wine of the country in a wooden cup. By this time the robbers, who had finished their work of spoiling the dead, were ready to return to their hiding-place among the hills.

“Come, captain,” said the Edomite, “’tis time to go; you had best leave your friend to himself, or you will see more of his countrymen than you will quite like.”

“Go,” said Benjamin; “I will follow you soon.”

Seraiah was now sufficiently revived to be able to sit up. The robber offered him bread and flesh. “’Tis clean meat,” he said. The wounded man, however, refused it. It might be of a lawful kind, but he did not know that it had been lawfully killed, and he contented himself with bread to which he added a few raisins with which he happened to have provided himself. Another draught of wine completed the repast.

“Benjamin,” he said, when he had finished, “you are too good for this life, for these friends. Come with us and fight on our side, for be sure that it is the side of the Lord. I will intercede for you to our captain, and he is as merciful as he is strong.”

“Nay, nay,” said Benjamin, “you are too confident; yours may be the side of the Lord, for I don’t know much about these things, but the side of the Lord, as far as I have been able to see, does not always win. I hate these Greeks. They robbed me of my house and everything that I had. May all the curses that are written in the Law overtake them! But they are very likely to get the best of it after all.”

“Did you see how they fled to-day?” cried Seraiah.

“Yes; you made them run,” said the robber, with a grim laugh. “It was rare sport to see them pelt helter-skelter down the pass, like so many sheep with a dog after them. But there are many more where these came from, and they will simply trample you down.”

“That will not be done so easily as you think. Is Judas the Hammer—for that is what the people call him—a likely man to be so dealt with? Nay, Benjamin, he is another Joshua, another David, and I am as sure as if a prophet had told me that the Lord of Hosts is with him, and will deliver the heathen into his hands.”

Benjamin was silent awhile. Then he said, in an altered tone, “You say the truth about Judas, the son of Mattathias. A better captain to lead, a better soldier to strike with the sword, I never saw. I would gladly follow him. And verily I would sooner fight for my people than for my own hand. But your ways are over-strict. I cannot put up with these ‘religious’ as you call them. Why should I not eat pig’s flesh if I can get it? It has a good relish, and it has never harmed me yet.”

“But ’tis forbidden, Benjamin,” gently answered Seraiah, now in good hopes of winning over this somewhat stubborn proselyte, “and you are too good a man to give up your country for a matter of meat or drink.”

“Aye,” said the man, “but there are other things.”

“Nothing surely that cannot be borne,” went on Seraiah. “Oh, Benjamin, you have saved my life to-day, and henceforth you are my brother; but I could almost wish, but for my wife and child’s sake—you remember Ruth and the babe?—that you had left me to die, if I am to see you return to the ways of death.”

“You have lost a good recruit,” said Seraiah to his comrades when they returned to him.

“What should this son of Belial profit us?” one of the Chasidim haughtily replied. “The Lord grant that my next arrow may be driven better home!”

Seraiah made no answer, but painfully lifting himself from the ground made his way up the pass alone. He did not care for the company of his comrades, and they, on their part, though they could not help respecting him as a soldier, thought him sadly wanting in zeal for the Law and for the traditions of the elders.

“It is easy to talk, my fine sir,” retorted one of the men, “when you have only got to stop at home and find fault; but if you had seen them to-day, you would be singing to a very different tune. By all the gods above and below, these Jews rushed on more like lions than men. And as to this Judas, son of Asmon, there is no standing against him. No man wants two blows from his sword.”

“That will be as you please, sir,” said the officer, who had not by any means recovered his temper after the imputations cast on his courage, “but if I may venture to say so, I would recommend that you should not get in the way of Judas, the son of Asmon.”

And, indeed, whatever men like Cleon may have pretended to think, from that time “began the fear of Judas and his brethren and an exceeding great dread to fall upon the nations round about them.”