"My blessing!" ejaculated Pollux, drawing back; "does any one ask a blessing from a wretch from whom it would sear and blast more than a curse from the lips of another!"
"Oh, never say so!" cried Zarah. "You doing now what is generous—noble—right! You are casting in your lot with the people of God; like Lot, you are turning your back upon Sodom."
"And you are the angel leading me thence," exclaimed Pollux. "Oh, Zarah, Zarah, sainted child of a sainted woman, you who have been the first to cast a gleam of hope on the darkness of guilt and despair, if ever I find mercy from man or from God, if ever I look again on the face of my mother, if ever I escape the righteous doom of an apostate, it is owing to you! Whatever be the result of our perilous enterprise to-night, remember that I thank you, I bless you—and you shall be blessed, O my daughter!" Pollux laid both his trembling hands on the head of his kneeling child, and uttered for her the first prayer to the true God which the apostate had dared to utter for many guilty, miserable years.
CHAPTER XXV.
A RETROSPECT.
Hadassah had, in the meantime, been enduring the martyrdom of the heart.
When Zarah, under the escort of Abishai, left her home to attend the celebration of the holy feast, Hadassah sent her soul with her, though failing health chained back the aged lady's feeble body. In thought, Hadassah shared the memorial feast; in thought, partook of the sacrifice and joined in the hymns of praise. Her mind dwelt on the circumstances attending the celebration of the first Passover, when, with loins girded and staff in hand, the fathers of Israel had taken their last meal in Egypt, before starting for the Promised Land.
"Is not this the Promised Land still?" thought Hadassah; "though those who are as the Canaanites of old now hold it—though unhallowed worship be offered on Mount Zion, and images be set up within the walls of Jerusalem. Yea, it is to Israel the Promised Land, till every prophecy be fulfilled; till the King come to Zion, lowly and riding on an ass (Zech. ix. 9); till—oh, most mysterious word!—the thirty pieces of silver be weighed out as the price of the Lord and cast to the potter (Zech. xi. 12, 18); till He shall speak peace to the heathen, and His dominion be from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth (Zech. ix. 10). Faith looks backward on fulfilled prophecy with gratitude, on yet unfulfilled prophecy with hope. Zion's brightest days are to come. Her Lord crowned her with glory in the days of old; but in the days which will rise on her yet, He shall Himself be to her as a diadem of beauty!" (Isa. xxviii. 5.)
Absorbed in such high contemplations, with hopes intensified by the victories of Maccabeus—which seemed to her types and pledges of greater triumphs to come—time did not pass wearily with Hadassah until the hour arrived for Zarah's expected return. Even the delay of that return did not at first seriously alarm Hadassah; circumstances might render it safer for the maiden to linger at Salathiel's house; she might even be pressed to remain there during the night, should Syrians be lurking about in the paths amidst the hills. Hadassah had so often attended meetings in the elder's dwelling, with or without her grand-daughter, that habit had made her regard such attendance as less perilous than it was now to be proved to have been.
But Hadassah on this night could not retire to rest. She could not close her eyes in sleep until they had again looked upon her whom the Hebrew lady fondly called her "white dove."