"If I cannot see Joab himself," observed Zarah, "I must ask the Lord Lycidas to find him and do this my errand, for the muleteer must not go unrewarded by me."
Accordingly, after the maiden, assisted by Lycidas, had descended from her litter, and explored with Anna the goatherd's abode, she bashfully asked her protector to execute for her this little commission, and with the heavy silver bracelet requite her obligation to Joab. "To yourself," added Zarah with downcast eyes, "I can proffer but heartfelt thanks."
The spirits of Lycidas had risen: with him, as with nature, the gloom of night was now succeeded by the brilliance of morning. The rebound of a mind lately weighed down with intense anxiety and the pressure of heavy responsibility was so great that it seemed as if every care were flung off for ever. Lycidas had accomplished his dangerous mission; he had placed his beloved charge under the care of her relatives; and he felt assured that her heart was his own. The clang of martial preparation which he now heard around him was as music to the ardent spirit of the Greek. He was now going to join in a brave struggle under a heroic commander, to deserve Zarah, and then to win her! The heart of the gallant young Athenian beat high with hope.
"Nay, Zarah," said Lycidas gaily, in reply to the maiden's words; "I may one day claim from you something better than thanks. As for the bracelet, rest assured that I will well requite faithful Joab; he shall be no loser if I keep the jewel in pledge, and never part with it, save to my bride." Lycidas clasped the bracelet on his arm, as with a proud and joyous step he quitted the goatherd's hut.
"Stay, Lycidas," expostulated Zarah, following him over the threshold; but then arresting her steps, and watching his receding form for a moment with a smile as radiant as his own. "How could he fear a rival!" was the thought flitting through Zarah's mind as she gazed. She then turned to re-enter the hut, and saw before her—Judas Maccabeus!
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE LEADER AND THE MAN.
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.