The task finished, Hannah betook herself to her own home to be gone an hour or two. Miriam, left alone, dropped down in the doorway. All day she had been unaccountably heavy of spirit, “not sick,” she had told Hannah in answer to a solicitous inquiry, “but just not glad of anything.”
Was it only yesterday her parents had started on their journey? It seemed like a week. And what strange sights they must be seeing now! Very strange indeed could they have seen through Miriam’s eyes, for her thoughts were soon jumbled by the sprites of Dreamland. When she awoke the afternoon shadows were lengthening. Hannah had not returned, and where was Judith? If she were late, Hannah would be sure to tell father and mother and they would be displeased. Why did she not come?
Miriam was dismayed, then came a thought, the horror of which sent her running to the top of the hill, where the path began to descend to the valley below: suppose Judith had been bitten by a viper out of the brushwood she had gone to gather for fuel! She was nowhere in sight, although she had been absent since a little after noon. Slowly Miriam walked down the hill, gazing long and searchingly in all directions until she stood in the silence and loneliness of the deserted fields. How find anybody or anything among those rank grasses, grown taller than herself now that the harvests were over? Yet at that very instant Judith must be lying among them somewhere, sick perhaps unto death.
Running hither and thither and thoroughly alarmed, Miriam essayed calling. The third time her hail was answered, but not in the way she had expected. Not Judith but Nathan—Nathan, pale and frightened; Nathan, entreating her silence but speaking himself in hoarse, excited whispers.
“Hush, Miriam, the valley is full of soldiers!”
She was amazed, incredulous, and he indignant at her unbelief. “Thinkest thou, Miriam, I know not a soldier when I see one?” he panted as they ran. “Was not every man covered from neck to thigh, back and front, with his breast-plate of bronze scales? Did not each wear a helmet and carry a shield on his left arm and a buckler[1] slung from his girdle? Some had long and heavy spears; some, bows and arrows and some had slings, with the stones for them in bags around their necks.”
“But, Nathan,” suggested Miriam, weakly, “peradventure our king passeth this way with his bodyguard.”
“Would our king rob Abner’s storehouses in the field? Nay, and these have not Israelitish faces. Besides, they came on horses which they have left at the head of the valley, and thou shouldst know that horses mean war. Canst thou not run faster, Miriam? We must warn quickly mother and the city.”
The little maid’s face blanched. “I must find Judith. Do thou go on and I—” Nathan’s remonstrances were cut short by the sudden appearance, out of the tall grass, of a man dressed just as the lad had described. He laid a detaining hand on each, addressing them in their own language, but his pronunciation showed that it was acquired.
“This time to-morrow,” pointing to the village on the hilltop, “our archers will have bent their bows and made ready their arrows and sent fire and destruction into the midst of thy city. None shall be left alive save such as we take into captivity.”