"Truly, as God lives!" said he, raising his right hand.
"Would you break your vow? Nay, do not answer. And I, too, have a vow—to die if God will take the sacrifice, with His people. Here I can serve, if not with those who fight, then with those who watch and care for the helpless. Take the lad, but here I must stay."
Caleb, who had been a listener, now uttered a cry such as never escaped him except when in some agony of pain. He flung himself into his sister's arms. No word passed between them, but there is a converse of hearts that needs no speech. She loosened his embrace.
"It is His will. My child, we shall not be separated. We will both stay."
Scarcely had she said this when cries of alarm rose without. Judas was instantly gone.
In an hour came Meph, utterly winded with his haste, but he managed with detached mouthfuls of breath to give the report of a wonderful encounter with the enemy. He declared that—
"The Greeks came along—a whole army of them—marching as stiff as a grove of palm-trees—shields on one shoulder and pikes on the other. All of a sudden whiz! whiz! whiz!—and they dropped in their tracks—lots of them did—as if they were bulrushes. The rest of them closed up, and put their shields together like a tent; but rocks came down on them like hailstones—and they broke and ran like hares."
With his crutch Meph mapped on the ground the plan of the battle, and then appealed to Caleb to predict that such a magnificent victory would be the end of the war. "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon is with us! The sword of the Lord and of Judas!" and he whirled his crutch in pantomimic extermination of the foe.
But, alas, such engagements were to be the almost daily experience of the patriots. The Greek bands were worsted by the intense bravery of the Jews, and the more shrewdly laid plans of their untrained but heaven-gifted leaders. In resisting these forays, and in their devoted care of the threatened people, the five sons of Mattathias won the titles which history has added to their names—John, the Good; Simon, the Wise; Judas, the Hammerer; Eleazar, the Sunburst; and Jonathan, the Crafty.