“Silence, blasphemer!” cried Azariah, as he whirled his sword over his head.
It was not the almost worthless weapon, with its dented edge and broken hilt, that he had carried into the battle. Early in the day he had cut down a Greek officer, and taken the sword of the dead man in exchange for his own.
As he spoke he beckoned to his countrymen. They stood back, even Micah recognizing the right of the husband to strike the first blow at the murderer of his wife.
Apollonius raised his sword to parry the stroke which he expected to be aimed at his head. With a rapid change of movement his adversary changed the blow into a thrust, and drove the point of his weapon through the Greek’s heart.
Azariah was drawing out his weapon from the corpse, when Judas, who had been hastening to the spot not without some hope of himself crossing swords with the hated Apollonius, came up.
“A mighty weapon that!” he exclaimed, as the conqueror wiped the blade on the dead man’s tunic. “Let me take it in my hands.”
He poised it and judged its balance, tried the edge, and then narrowly scanned the markings on the blade.
“Ah!” said he, “how came you by this sword? I had observed”—and indeed his eagle eye noted every detail—“that yours was but a poor weapon, unworthy of your strength, and I wished to find something better for you.”
Azariah told him how he had taken it from a Greek on the field of battle.
“And saw you this?” he went on, pointing to the Holy Name which had been engraved on the blade. “Doubtless this belonged to some Hebrew warrior in time past, for the fashion of the letters is somewhat antique; the heathen whom you slew had taken it, and now the Lord has given it back into the hands of the faithful.”