As Deborah appeared surrounded by her maidens the cries, "Long live Judas Maccabæus!" were quickly changed.
"Joy! joy to the daughter of Elkiah! Long live Deborah, the Daughter of Jerusalem!" rang from a thousand lips.
The happy crowd hurried along as if impelled by their own huzzas, until the bride disappeared within the portal of the house of Shattuck.
An hour later Judas sat alone in his chamber in the palace on Sion. The stars as they floated by looked through the high window, but did not disturb the soul which at that hour was moving through depths as profound as theirs. The gray dawn alone aroused him—in which there was a poetic propriety; for since the day-spring summons all nature to activity, why should it not awaken the tremendous forces of this great heart for its work in resurrecting a nation?
Judas reached out his hand and struck the bronze gong—the same that Apollonius had rung three years before when he was vanquished by the spirit of Deborah in this same hall.
"Call the Captains!"
His chief officers came with evidence of hasty toilet—for celerity never waited upon formality in the councils of Judas. His sentences, as he addressed them, were laconic, as if he assumed that his hearers had listened at his brain and already knew his thoughts.
"Friends, I learn that the men of Edom are moving from their camps on the south. The tribesmen of the Jordan and beyond are preparing to strike us. Tyre and Sidon are enrolling their trained bands. Every man, then, in readiness by the turn of the moon!"
With a wave of his hand he dismissed them.