“I have come from the tombs,” exclaimed he; “I had lain down to die in the resting-place of my fathers, in the valley of Jehoshaphat. A man in white raiment stood beside me and commanded me to come and bear witness of the truth. The Romans were round me—he led me through them; the battlements were before me—he led me through them; riot, fury, and frenzy stood in my path through your city—he led me through them; and lo! here I come, and proclaim by his command: ‘Shed not the innocent blood.’”
Onias the Accused
Onias stood paralyzed. No memory of mine could recall the haggard features of the stranger. The chief of the tribunal in manifest confusion required his name.
“My name,” he answered, with a wild wave of his hand, “is nothing—air—is gone. What I was, is past; what I shall be, the tomb alone must tell; but what I am, is the witness, commissioned to proclaim Onias the betrayer of the blood of your nobles, the slave of Rome, the traitor to his country, the apostate to his religion.”
All hands were lifted up in astonishment. Onias, sick at heart, made a feeble gesture of denial.
“Dares the traitor deny his own handwriting?” was the indignant reply. “Let him read his treason, committed within these twelve hours.”
He stalked over to the guilty Onias and held his letters to the Roman general before his shrinking eye.
While my eyes were fixed on the portal through which had vanished my last hope of happiness, I was startled by an outcry, and I saw the gleam of steel at my throat. Onias, in despair of smiting me by the arm of the law, had made a frenzied effort to destroy me by his own. Quick as lightning the stranger threw himself between us and grasped the assassin; they struggled—they were involved in the large and loose robe and fell together. I sprang forward to separate them. But the deed was done. Onias lay rolling upon the ground; the dagger was in the stranger’s grasp, and it was crimson to the hilt. I could feel no vindictiveness against the dying, and I offered him my hand. He threw a violent expression of scorn into his stiffening features, and cried at convulsive intervals:
“No compassion—no hypocrisy for me—I die as I lived. I hated you, for you thwarted me.—You have the best of the game now; but if I had lived till to-morrow, I should have been lord of Jerusalem.—The Romans will settle all.—You and yours would have been in my power.—You shall perish.—That boy is your son; he was brought to me in his infancy; I hated you as my rival; and I swore that you should never see your first-born again. I sold him to the Alexandrian.—You shall not live to triumph over me; your dungeon shall be your tomb; another night, and you sleep no more, or sleep forever.”
He gathered his mantle over his face and died.