"The Lord forgive your oath!" replied Sirach. "But what was I saying? Had I told my tale?"
"No, good man, you had not yet begun it. We are waiting to hear it and to believe it, if it be not too incredible, for your memory seems as tangled as your tongue."
"Aye, and believe it you shall. There was once in Alexandria, in the days of Ptolemy called Euergetes—that damnable king who bade them gather all the Jews in the hippodrome that they might be trampled to death by the feet of his elephants—there was among these sons of Abraham one named Nahum, son of Nahum of Jerusalem. By a miracle from the hand of the Lord the infuriated beasts were tamed and harmed not one of our people, even as the lions in the presence of Daniel."
"We have heard the story," said Dion, impatient at the old man's prolixity.
"Nahum escaped death; but, having been a leader of our people against the tyrant, Ptolemy followed him and his children with persecution. He seized the estates, and sought to kill all his lineage. Nahum fled.
"Sara, daughter of Nahum, was befriended by a noble Greek of Macedon, who took her as a child to his own house. She grew fairer than the flower of the lotus, her mind brilliant as the diamond, her virtue white as the pearl. By most she came to be esteemed a Greek, for her father's friend bestowed upon her all the culture of his people. But the God of Isaac and Rebecca, of Jacob and Rachel, was with her. There came to Alexandria a son of the faith, as Isaac the patriarch came to Padan Aram. My master, Shattuck, espoused this woman, Sara. She bore him a son. But upon the child's face the father never looked. Journeying to Alexandria Shattuck was lost, whether by the hand of the robbers of the desert, or through the jealousy of others, I may not say—for I am too old a man to speak the thoughts which it were well to bury with my body. The child's life was sought, I know not by whom; but this," Gideon bared his arm, across which was the scar of a wound that had well-nigh severed it near the shoulder, "this arm took part of the stroke which, but for it, would have exterminated my master's house."
Dion had been listening not only with incredulity, but with some disposition to make sport of Sirach's story. He now took the hand of the old man, and gazed upon the scar as if it were an object of religious reverence. He then pushed his fingers through his own hair in a manner that was not his habit even when deeply thinking.
"Old man," said he, "if I were the baby for whom you took that slash, I would build you a tomb as big as Absalom's down there in Siloa. That cut would have taken the top off a man's head."