We will now glance at the encampment of the Hebrew warriors, upon a wild expanse of undulating ground, in view of the towers of Bethsura, a strong fortress rebuilt by the Edomite settlers on the site of that raised in former times by Rehoboam. Bethsura is now garrisoned by the Syrians, and its environs occupied by the countless tents of their mighty host.

On a small rising ground near the centre of the Hebrew camp stands, as on a rostrum, an old Jew clad in a camel-hair garment, with long gray unkempt hair hanging over his shoulders. His manner is excited, his gestures vehement, and the shrill accents of his voice are so raised as to be heard to a considerable distance. A gradually increasing circle of listeners gathers around him—stern, weather-beaten men, who have toiled and suffered much for their faith. What marvel if with some of these warriors religion have darkened into fanaticism, courage degenerated into savage fierceness? It is the tendency of war, especially if it be of a guerrilla character, to inflame the passions and harden the heart. Only terrible necessity can justify the unnatural strife which arms man against his brother man. Even the most noble struggle in which patriot can engage in defence of his country's freedom, draws along with it terrible evils, of which a vast amount of human suffering is not perhaps the greatest.

"Yea, I do charge you, Joab, I do charge you, O son of Ahijah, with having brought a spy, a traitor, into our camp!" almost shrieked the wild orator Jasher, as he pointed with his shrivelled finger at the sturdy muleteer, who stood in the innermost rank of the circle. "Was not this Greek, by your own showing, present at the martyrdom of the blessed saint Solomona?—was he not tried for his life at her grave, where he was discovered coiling like a serpent in the darkness?—is he not one of a race of idolaters, worshippers of images made by man's hand?"

"All that I can say," replied Joab, doggedly, "is, that whatever
Lycidas may have been, he is not an idolater now."

"Who are you that you should judge, you Nabal, you son of folly?" exclaimed the excited orator. "Mark you, men of Judah, mark you the blindness that falls on some men—ay, even on a reputed saint like the Lady Hadassah! Joab has learned from her handmaiden the astounding fact that for months this Lycidas, this viper, was nurtured and tended in her home, as if he had been a son of Abraham! Doubtless it was this act of worse than folly on the part of Hadassah that drew down a judgment on her and her house. Mark what followed. The warmed viper escapes from her dwelling, and the next day—ay, the very next day—Syrian dogs beset the house of Salathiel as he celebrates the holy Feast! Who guided them thither?" The question was asked with passionate energy, and the feelings of the speaker were evidently beginning to communicate themselves to the audience. "Who then lay a bleeding corpse on the threshold, slain by the murderous Syrians?" continued Jasher, with yet fiercer action; "who but Abishai, the brave, the faithful, he who had denounced the viper, and had sought, but in vain, to crush it—it was he who fell at last a victim to its treacherous sting!" Jasher ended his peroration with a hissing sound from between his clinched teeth, and the caldron of human feelings around him began, as it were, to seethe and boil. Fanaticism stops not to weigh evidence, or to listen to reason. Joab could hardly make his voice heard amidst the roar of angry voices that was rising around him.

"Lycidas was present and helped at the burial of the Lady Hadassah; he has risked his life to protect her daughter," cried the honest defender of the Greek.

"Ha! ha! how much he risked we know not, but we can well guess what he would win!" exclaimed Jasher, with a look of withering scorn. "He has crept into the favour of a foolish girl, who forgets the traditions of her people, who cares not for the afflictions of Jacob, who prefers a goodly person"—the old man's features writhed with the fierceness of his satire—"to all that a child of Abraham should regard with reverence and honour! But what can we expect from the daughter of a perjured traitor, an apostate? Had she not Abner for a father, and can we expect otherwise than that she should disgrace her family, her tribe, her nation, by wedding an accursed Gentile, a detestable Greek?"

"Never! never!" yelled out a hundred fierce voices. And one of the crowd shouted aloud, "I would rather slay her with my own hand, were she my own daughter!"

"I cannot believe Lycidas false!" cried out Joab, at the risk of drawing the tempest of rage upon himself.

"You cannot believe him false, you son of the nether millstone!" screamed out the furious Jasher, stamping with passion; "as if you were a match for a wily Greek, born in that idolatrous, base, ungrateful Athens, that banished her only good citizen, and poisoned her only wise one!" The fierce prejudices of race were only too easily aroused in that assembly of Hebrew warriors, and if Jasher were blamed by some of his auditors, it was for allowing that any Athenian could be either wise or good.

"Yet hear me for a moment—I must be heard," cried Joab, straining his voice to its loudest pitch, yet scarcely able to make his words audible; "Lycidas has been admitted into the Covenant by our priests; he can give proofs—"

"Who talks of proofs?" exclaimed Jasher, stamping again on the earth. "Did you never hear of the proofs given by Zopyrus? Know you not how Babylon, the golden city, fell under the sword of Darius? Zopyrus, minion of that king, fled to the city which he was besieging, showed its defenders his ghastly hurts—nose, ears shorn off—and pointed to the bleeding wounds as proofs that Darius the tyrant, by inflicting such injuries upon him, had won a right to his deathless hatred.[1] The Babylonians believed the proofs, they received the impostor, and ye know the result. Babylon fell, not because the courage of her defenders quailed, or famine thinned their numbers; not because the enemy stormed at her wall, or pestilence raged within it; but because she had received, and believed, and trusted a traitor, who had sacrificed his own members to gain the opportunity of destroying those who put faith in his honour! Hebrews! a Zopyrus has now come into our camp! Will ye open your arms, or draw your swords, to receive him?"

A wild yell of fury arose from the listening throng, so fierce, so loud, that it drew towards the spot Hebrews from all parts of the encampment. It drew amongst others the young proselyte, who came eager to know the cause of the noise and excitement, quite unconscious that it was in any way connected with himself. As Lycidas made towards the centre of the crowd, it divided to let him pass into the immediate presence of Jasher, his accuser and self-constituted judge, and then ominously closed in behind him, so as to prevent the possibility of his retreat.

Lycidas had come amongst the Hebrew warriors with all the frank confidence of a volunteer into their ranks; and the Greek's first emotion was that of amazement, when he found himself suddenly the object of universal indignation and hatred. There was no mistaking the expression of the angry eyes that glared upon him from every direction, nor the gestures of hands raising javelins on high, or unsheathing keen glittering blades.

"Here he is, the traitor, the Gentile, led hither to die the death he deserves!" exclaimed Jasher.

"What mean ye, Hebrews—friends? Slay me not unheard!" cried Lycidas, raising on high his voice and his hand. "I am a proselyte; I renounce my false gods,—"

"He has their very effigies on his arm!" yelled out Jasher, pointing with frenzied action to the silver bracelet of Pollux worn by the Greek, on which had been fashioned heads of Apollo and Diana encircled with rays.

Here was evidence deemed conclusive; nothing further was needed. "He dies! he dies!" was the almost unanimous cry. The life of Lycidas had not been in greater peril when he had been discovered at the midnight burial, or when he had wrestled with Abishai on the edge of the cliff. In a few moments the young Greek would have lain a shapeless trampled corpse beneath his murderers' feet, when the one word "Forbear!" uttered in a loud, clear voice whose tones of command had been heard above the din of battle, stayed hands uplifted to destroy; and with the exclamation, "Maccabeus! the prince!" the throng fell back on either side, and through the ranks of his followers the leader strode into the centre of the circle. One glance sufficed to inform him sufficiently of the nature of the disturbance; he saw that he had arrived on the spot barely in time to save his Athenian rival from being torn in pieces by the crowd.

"What means this tumult? shame on ye!" exclaimed Maccabeus, sternly surveying the excited throng.

"We would execute righteous judgment on a Greek—an idolater—a spy!" cried Jasher, pointing at Lycidas, but with less impassioned gesture; for the fanatic quailed in the presence of Maccabeus, who was the one man on earth whom he feared.

"He is a Greek, but neither idolater nor spy," said the prince. "He is one of a gallant people who fought bravely for their own independence, and can sympathize with our love of freedom. He has come to offer us the aid of his arm; shame on ye thus to requite him."

"I doubt but he will play us false," muttered one of the warriors, giving voice to the thoughts of the rest.

"We shall soon have an opportunity of settling all such doubts," said
Maccabeus; "we shall attack the enemy at noon, and then shall this
Greek prove in the battle whether he be false man or true."

The prospect of so soon closing with the enemy was sufficient to turn the attention of every Hebrew warrior present to something of more stirring interest than the fate of a solitary stranger. Jasher, however, would not so easily let his intended victim go free.

"He's an Achan!" exclaimed the fanatic; "if he fight amongst us, he will bring a curse on our arms!"

"He is a proselyte," replied Maccabeus in a loud voice, which was heard to the farthest edge of the crowd; "our priests and elders have received him—and I receive him—as a Hebrew by adoption, companion in arms, a brother in the faith!"

The words of the prince were received with respectful submission, if not with satisfaction. Maccabeus was regarded with enthusiasm by his followers, not only as a gallant and successful leader, but as one whose prudence they could trust, and whose piety they must honour. No man dare lay a finger upon him over whom the chief had thrown the shield of his powerful protection.

Lycidas felt that for the second time he owed his life to Judas Maccabeus. There was a gush of warm gratitude towards his preserver in the heart of the young Athenian; but something in the manner of the prince told Lycidas that he would not listen to thanks, that the expression of the Greek's sense of deep obligation would be regarded as an intrusion. Lycidas therefore, compelled, as it were, to silence, could only with fervour ask Heaven for an opportunity of showing his gratitude in the coming fight by actions more forcible than words.

"Now, sound the trumpets to arms," exclaimed Maccabeus, "and gather my troops together. If God give us the victory to-day, the way to Jerusalem itself will be open before us! Here will I marshal our ranks for the fight." Maccabeus strode to the summit of the rising ground from which Jasher had just been addressing the crowd, and beckoned to his standard-bearer to plant his banner behind him, where it could be seen from all parts of the camp. Here, with folded arms, Maccabeus watched the movements of his warriors as, at the signal-call of the trumpet-blast, they hastened from every quarter to be marshalled in battle-array, by their respective captains, under the eye of their great commander. With rapid precision the columns were formed; but before they moved on to the attack, Maccabeus, in brief but earnest supplication, besought the Divine blessing on their arms.

[1] The student of history need not be reminded that the fall of Babylon through the stratagem of Zopyrus was quite distinct from and subsequent to its conquest by Cyrus. (See Rollins's "Ancient History.")