In the unsettled state of the Holy Land, where its brave sons had to maintain a kind of guerrilla warfare against the powerful enemy who held its strongholds and ruled in its capital--where communication between places not far remote from each other was difficult and dangerous, and a written letter was a thing almost unknown--the Asmonean brothers had been in ignorance of many events which have occupied a large space in these pages. Joab, therefore, on his arrival in the camp of the Hebrews, had much to tell that was to them entirely new.
Judas with thrilling interest had listened to the muleteer's account of Zarah's peril and escape from the palace of Antiochus, and the deaths of Hadassah and Pollux. The fount of tenderness which lay concealed under the chief's usually calm and almost stern exterior was stirred to its inmost depths. Grief, admiration, love, swelled his brave heart. Maccabeus could hardly wait to hear the end of Joab's narration. Zarah was near him--his beauteous, his beloved, his chosen bride--she who had so suffered and so mourned--the tender orphan maiden bereaved of all love, all protection save his own--but dearer in her poverty and desolation than she could have been had she brought him the dowry of an empire!
It was thus that Maccabeus thought of Zarah, as, with an eagerness of impatience which could not have brooked an instant's longer delay, he strode rapidly towards the hut which sheltered his treasure. He soon beheld her--could it indeed be she? No desolate, weeping, trembling fugitive met the gaze of the chief; but a maiden bright and fair as the morn, with a blush on her cheeks and a smile on her lips, her whole countenance beaming with hope, and her eyes fixed with a lingering look on a Greek who was disappearing from view in a direction opposite to that by which Judas had approached her! The depths of the leader's feelings were again stirred, but this time as by a bar of glowing red-hot iron.
"Who is yon Gentile?" was the sudden fierce exclamation which burst from the warrior's lips.
Never before had her kinsman looked so terrible to Zarah as when he startled her then by his sudden appearance. It was not because she now saw Maccabeus for the first time arrayed in the harness of battle, his tall powerful frame partly sheathed in glittering steel, and a plumed helmet on his head, giving him a resemblance to the description which she had heard from Lycidas of the fabled god of war; it was the eye, the manner, the tone of Judas that changed the smile of the maiden in a moment to a look of embarrassment and fear. Antiochus himself, on his judgment-seat, had scarcely appeared more formidable to the trembling captive before him, than did the kinsman who had come to welcome her, and who would have died to shield her from wrong!
Maccabeus repeated his stern question before Zarah found courage to reply. "That is Lycidas, the Athenian lord," she faltered; "he whom you spared by the martyrs' tomb. He has well requited your mercy. He protected and aided Hadassah to the end, and paid the last honours to her dear remains; he struck down the Syrian who slew my father. Lycidas has embraced the Hebrew faith, and has come to fight, and, if need be, to die in the Hebrew cause!"
The maiden spoke rapidly, and with a good deal of nervous excitement. She did not venture to glance up again into the face of her kinsman to see the effect of her explanation, for all the false hopes regarding his indifference with which she had buoyed herself, had vanished like a bubble at a touch. Maccabeus did not at once reply. Silently he led Zarah back into the hut, and motioned to her to take her seat upon a low heap of cushions which Anna had removed from the litter, and placed on the earthen floor for the accommodation of her young mistress. He then dismissed the attendant by a wave of his hand. The profound gloomy silence of her kinsman was by no means re-assuring to Zarah, who felt much as a criminal might feel in presence of a judge--albeit in regard to her conduct towards Lycidas her conscience was clear.
Maccabeus stood before Zarah, the shadow of his form falling upon the maiden, as he towered tween her and the light, gloomily gazing down upon her.
"Zarah," he said at last, "there must be no concealment between us. You know in what relation we stand to each other. You have told me what that Gentile has been to Hadassah, and to Abner your father; tell me now, What is he to you?"
Zarah struggled to regain her courage, though she knew not how deeply her evident fear of him wounded the spirit of her kinsman. She did not dare to answer his question directly. "Lycidas is not a Gentile," she said; "he is, as you are, a servant of God, a true believer; he has been fully admitted into all the privileges held by our race."
"Even the privilege of wedding a Hebrew maiden?" inquired Maccabeus with slow deliberation.
Zarah fancied that his tone was less stern, and was thankful that Judas had been the one to break ground upon so delicate a subject.
"Hadassah would not have blamed us," she said simply, blushing deeply as she spoke.
Notwithstanding what had just passed, Zarah was utterly unprepared for the effect of what was in fact ............