But he said it without the gladness that a Jewish father, newly blessed with the hope that there should be one to preserve his name in Israel, should have felt.
“But you must come in and see him, for indeed he is of a singular beauty.”
The young man followed his host into the chamber already described, and sat down to wait. Presently [pg 115]Azariah reappeared, holding the child in his arms. It was no father’s fondness that had made him speak of his singular beauty. The child was but five days old; but he had none of the “shapeless” look which is commonly to be seen in the newly born. His features were shaped with a regularity most uncommon at so tender an age, and his complexion beautifully clear, while his little head was surrounded with what may be called a halo of golden hair.
Micah was loud in his admiration. “I never saw his equal for beauty. You are indeed a happy father to have the fairest son in all Israel.”
The smile on Azariah’s face faded away.
“I would not be thankless for the ‘gift that cometh from the Lord,’ nor wanting in faith; yet I sometimes cannot but think that in these days the childless are the happiest, or, I should rather say, the least unhappy.”
“Of course you will be prudent,” said Micah, “and yield to the necessities of the time. Put off the circumcision of the child. There can be no harm in that. And when Hannah has got her strength again, you can come down to my place in the Lebanon, and it can be done quietly, without any one being the wiser.”
Azariah said nothing. He turned away his face, but not before his brother-in-law had seen his eyes fill with tears. After leaving some loving messages for his sister the young man departed, hoping, [pg 116]though not without some serious doubt, that his advice would be followed.
A week after, when the question, he knew, would have been decided one way or the other, he bent his steps again towards his sister’s house. As he walked through the streets he could see that the persecutors were busy at their work. Fires were burning here and there, and copies of the Law and the other holy books were being burned in them. From a house which he recognized as being the dwelling of a scribe of great learning, a party of Greek soldiers burst forth, as he passed, dragging behind them a richly-ornamented scroll of the Psalms. For a moment the wild impulse surged in his heart to rescue the sacred writing from the flames; but he recognized the hopelessness of the attempt; and, indeed, he sadly asked himself, was he fit to be a champion of holy things? A soldier gathered up the parchment in his arms, and tossed it in a heap on the fire. Part of it opened as it fell, and Micah saw for a few moments before the flames reached them, words which he never forgot till his dying day: “Princes have persecuted me without a cause, yet do I not swerve from Thy commandments.” As he stood and looked, with a rage in his heart which he could not express, two more soldiers came out of the house, holding between them the scribe himself, a venerable man, in whom Micah recognized an old friend of his father’s. They threw him down, face foremost, on [pg 117]the fire, and held him there till he was suffocated. But before the tragedy was finished, the young Jew had turned away, feeling in his heart that the question which he had been debating so long was being rapidly settled for him.
The blow that was to clinch his conclusions was not long in falling. As he came near the bottom of the little hill on the top of which stood his sister’s house, he saw a cross, and, bound to it by cords, what seemed to be the figure of a woman, with a dead child hung round her neck. The sun had set, and the light was failing with the rapidity that is characteristic of a southern latitude.