Azariah then related his dream.
“The angel whom you saw,” said Judas, “was, doubtless, the angel of battle, and the Lord has been faithful, as ever, to His promise.”
He gave back the consecrated sword to Azariah, and took the weapon which was still grasped in the right hand of the dead Apollonius. “With this,” he said, “I will fight as long as I live.” And he broke out into the triumphal chant of the Psalmist—“The ungodly have drawn out the sword, and have bent the bow to cast down the poor and needy. Their sword shall go through their own heart and their bow shall be broken.”
The Sword of Apollonius.
CHAPTER XVI.
NEWS FROM THE BATTLE-FIELD.
While the patriots, bivouacking on the field of battle, slept the sound sleep of those who have fought a good fight, the women, left, with the children and the sick, in charge of a small guard, only strong enough to protect them against casual robbers, felt the most intense anxiety. Ruth in her cave, with the children slumbering by her side, watched through the night, listening intently to every sound. At one time she could hear the bats which haunted the rocks flapping and fluttering as they went out to take their flights in the night air. Then from farther away came the moaning of the jackals, as they hunted for their prey, with now and then the deeper note of a wolf, or the sound, so strangely like to mocking laughter, of the hooting owls. Everything at that moment seemed very dark and hopeless to the anxious wife.