“But this is woman’s time; remember Sisera!” Rizpah began dressing for departure.
“Oh, mother, wait! Let us send the boys for news into the city. Perhaps the worst has not come, when the mothers must take arms.”
Rizpah silently assented. The boys were sent, and in half an hour returned with hot and beaming faces. “The Mamelukes are all slung out of the city! Lots of them killed,” both exclaimed, between their pantings.
“How brothers: is it all over?”
“Yes, all over! They’re gone! Oh, you ought to have seen how our young men and the Druses raced them,” interposed one.
“If it hadn’t been for the Druses we’d all been murdered!” cried the other. Then the brothers caught up the narrative in turn.
“And, Miriamne, some of the young soldier-like men, after the fight, went about shouting ‘cheers for the flag of Maccabees and the maid of Bozrah!’ They say the ‘maid of Bozrah’ means you. What do they intend?”
Miriamne seemed not to hear the question. She was engrossed with her own thoughts and thus was meditating: “It’s just as the Old Clock Man said! The Druses by their needed aid prove it; the Jews need a Saviour!”
“Boys,” presently questioned Rizpah, “Were many of the heretics killed?”