"But have I not cared for myself at other times?"
"True: yet the battle to-morrow will not be as the others. Gorgias is experienced, the most tactful, the most desperate of all the Greek generals. He will not stand on the defensive, but make his own battle. If in the night he should get his forces to the ridge, the fight will be here, or between this and Jerusalem. If he should be worsted, he will be succored by two other armies as great as his own. Promise me that you will not even see this battle, for I know too well that if you so much as look you will be drawn into some danger."
"For your sake, Judas, I will be as other women. The Lord gird you with His strength for the morrow!"
"Your prayer is a prophecy. It gives me strength already. Farewell!"
Deborah sat with little Caleb's hand in hers. The sun was going down. The red orb hung over the Great Sea, transforming the watery horizon into a glorious carpet fitting the feet of the King of Day, and making the sky his canopy of gold.
"Where are we now, sister?" asked the lad. "I hear a rustling as if the trees were moving together."
"Not trees, brother, but men are gathering. By the side of us is Mizpah, where, in the time of the prophet Samuel, the whole nation came together. I would that your eyes were open to see."
"But your eyes are mine, sister. What shall I look at?"
"Well, stand so. Now we see toward the sunrise the far-away mountains of Gilead and Moab. How beautiful! The great wall of rock rises into the sky. It flashes with color, almost like the floor of heaven which Moses and the seventy elders saw. Now turn—you are facing the north."
"Aye, I see old Hermon with his helmet of snow, and the cloud plumes floating from the top of it," cried the lad, as if his eyes had really opened.