Long time they bowed to the earth, the lad kneeling by her side, his arm thrown about her, and the blind eyes flashing with his imagination of armies and victories.
"Come, let us go!" said Deborah, rising.
"Where shall we go?"
"To Jerusalem."
"Why, sister! Not again to the city. Dion is gone, and our brother Benjamin too, and only Greek soldiers are waiting to kill you."
"Yes, child, to the city, to our father's house. I believe—Lord help my faith!—that on the morrow Israel will triumph, and we will welcome Judas the Deliverer, perhaps as the Messiah—for such he seems to me. But if we triumph not, there will be no need to flee elsewhere. The sons of Mattathias will first perish in the battle, and all the hosts of Israel with them; and we will perish too. But let it be in our father's house. Yet whether we live or die I owe it to our friend, the good Dion, to go back to Jerusalem. He is in peril for our sakes. The Greeks may slay him for letting me go. But if I show them that I have not escaped, Dion may be saved."
"Then let us go to Jerusalem," said Caleb, grasping his sister's hand. "Let us go."
They went a little way in silence except for the murmur of the multitude at worship, which at length died away in the distance. They sat down to rest amid the gray stones of the hillside.
"Hark!" said the lad, "that's Meph!"