"Amen!" rejoined Caleb.
Deborah glanced upward at the majestic march of what Caleb said were "God's Helmets," and then along the line of the Greek encampment, as she exclaimed, "O stars that fought in their courses against Sisera, fight against Apollonius!"
Caleb started, pressing his sister's hand. "Are the stars moving, sister?"
"No, child; it is but the night winds warring against the high walls of the city. The stars hear no command of the Lord as yet."
"But listen!" again interposed the excited child.
"No, that is only the wind among the olives in the old garden of Kedron," replied Deborah.
"But was there not once the 'sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees' that told David the Lord went before him to battle?" quoted the child.
"Oh, if God would be to us as thy faith, my child!" and Deborah stooped to kiss his forehead as they hurried away.
It was not difficult to avoid the soldiers, for, with the exception of an occasional sentry posted along the high road, the companies kept within their various camps. The Greeks had learned lessons in caution during their brief occupancy of Palestine such as had not been needed in the other countries they had subjugated. It was quite a common thing in the neighborhood of Jerusalem for sentinels never to return from their beats. Small companies of guards sometimes disappeared mysteriously, as if swallowed by earthquakes which made no rumble and closed their lips in silence. Even close to the camps men dropped in their tracks, while a stone, the size of one's fist, went clattering over the ground, leaving its mark in a broken skull or a mangled face; for the Jewish herdsmen were still as expert with the sling as they were in the days of David. Rumor attributed many of these daring exploits to a single family, five young men, the sons of a priest in Modin, chief of whom in this outlawry was Judas, reputed a giant.
Deborah and Caleb were comparatively safe, for they did not attempt the highways, nor even the beaten footpaths, but passed hastily across the stony fields, and glided crouching between the vine-rows on cultivated terraces. Now they paused to listen in the deeper shadows, by some gnarled olive whose dusky branches made the night darker; again, they hid behind the broad-bottomed cypresses if noise were heard; then, utterly wearied, they rested quietly for a few moments under the fig-trees.