"Then I will wait. But fly! oh, Dion, fly! Your word! Your sword if need be! My father! Oh, my father!"
Dion was gone.
As the Greek hurried away only the arm of the old servant Huldah prevented Deborah falling to the pavement. She moved close to the street door, but did not open it. There she stood, not unlike the statue of a runner whose whole attitude shows flight while the feet are motionless. She had almost broken her pledge and gone after Dion, but something held her back. Was it her word? She did not think of that. It was rather the word of the Greek; for had he not said, "If man can save him, I will"? She saw that in this man of hated race was the only hope. If he should fail, then God had willed the worst, and she would submit.
Submit? To what? To grief? To bereavement? Yes. To insult? Perhaps to death, for the assailants of her father would not spare his child.
But there was another submission she deliberately contemplated. It was submission to the overmastering passion which had been born last night amid the ruins of the house of Ben Isaac—to become a minister of vengeance for her people. She seemed to hear her father's voice above the din of the street calling her to avenge his name. The shades of the martyrs of Israel in her excited imagination trooped from Sheol, and stood around her as if to lay their hands upon her in ordination to a life entirely devoted to patriotism and religion; devoted, whether with her hands red in the blood of Israel's enemies, or white with nursing service of Israel's distressed people, she knew not, she cared not.
She was aroused from her reverie by the voice of Caleb.
"Sister, shall we not flee? Death is over the house. They have slain our father. I but now heard the passers-by say, 'Elkiah is dead.'"
"Flee, child? Whither can we flee? The angel of destruction hovers over us, his wings black, oh, so black! and over all the city, and over all the land. We are safe for the moment only here. We must wait on the Lord, and—on the Greek!"
"Has fear driven away your memory, sister dear?" said Caleb. "There are passages from our home into the great quarry which underlies the city."
"True, child, but we have never learned them."