Meanwhile life at Jerusalem had been settling down into a peaceful order. The younger of the two priests whom Eglah had befriended had found scope for his energies by joining the army; Shemaiah, the elder, was again an inmate in the house which had sheltered him, where Eglah, who had never forgotten the charity with which he had spoken of her husband, tended him with all the care of a daughter. The old man was never tired of hearing the story of the two dismal years during which he had been in hiding.
“Ah, father!” she said to him one day, “you were not so ill off in your poor prison after all. Had you had your liberty you would have seen altars to the false gods in every street. And it was not safe to pass them without showing some sign of reverence.”
“And how did you fare, my daughter?” asked the old man.
“I could avoid them, knowing where they were, by passing by on the other side, and my good Glaucus—the Lord have mercy on him!—was always kind and helpful. He would fetch the water regularly from the fountain, where there was an altar to the Naiad, as they called the demon of the spring, which I could not have avoided. The people used to laugh at him for doing a woman’s work, but he did not heed them. O why was he taken away before he could learn the truth? I think that he would have known it if he could have lived a little longer.”
And the poor woman burst into a passion of tears. She was always haunted with this fear of her husband’s fate, and reproached herself with not having been earnest enough in speaking of the truth to her husband.
“Peace, my daughter,” said the old man, gently; “the mercies of the Lord are without end, and His ways past finding out. Be sure that He will not forget the kindness that was showed to a daughter of Abraham. But tell me,” he went on, anxious to change the subject—“tell me how we came to find the courts of the Temple desolate and overgrown as though no one had entered them for months? Did you not say that there were sacrifices there, and feasts to the demons whom the Greeks worship?”
“Yes, father; it was so for a time. But soon there were few or none to make sacrifices, for the [pg 266]city was utterly impoverished. So the priests, whom Philip the Phrygian and Apollonius—the curse of the Lord be upon him!—brought in to serve at the altars, went elsewhere, for, of a truth, they would have died of hunger had they stayed here. O father, it was a mournful existence; of a truth we were fed with the bread of affliction and the water of affliction.”
As they talked Ruth came in with a troubled face.
“O Eglah!” she cried, “I did hope that we should have peace and quiet, but there are wars and rumours of wars on every side. This morning letters came to the captain from our brethren in Gilead. That evil Timotheus—would to God he had not escaped out of the hand of Judas!—has gathered together a host of the Ammonites and slain some—a thousand, ’tis said, with their wives and children, and shut up the rest in the fortress of Dametha. And now my husband and my brother are in council with the captain, and I fear me much that they will be sent to the wars, for indeed,” she added, with a touch of a woman’s pride in those that are dear to her, “Judas esteems them highly, and will always have them in places of trust. Nor would I keep them back from helping the Lord’s people. But hark! I hear his step.”
As she spoke Seraiah came in from the council.