“Nay, Hannah, but if thou hadst fled from one terror to another ever since yesterday afternoon when I first beheld the soldiers coming up the valley, and had finally lain concealed for hours, not daring to move lest thou be discovered, chilled by the heavy night dews, stiff and cramped, frightened and lacking food, thou also wouldst walk with difficulty.”
Eli was horrified, reproachful: “Thou knewest the Syrians were upon us and madest no effort to warn the city? We might have put up a better defense or saved some of our supplies by hiding them. As it is, many have suffered, a few even unto death.”
He paused and looked shudderingly at a swiftly approaching cloud which darkened the air, then quickly drew his mother inside the nearest house. “The vultures descend, having scented their prey from afar, yet few were slain and they only because of desperate resistance. The pale young man, scarce older than I, who seemed to command the party, had his men well under control. He reproved the soldier who smote thee, mother, and stooped over thee with horror in his eyes, himself tying the cloth which saved thee from bleeding to death and which I could not tie with one hand. I could love him were he other than a heathen and a robber!”
Turning to Judith, who had followed them, his voice became stern: “Knowest thou that famine stareth us in the face—and thou mightest have saved it?”
The girl’s tones were aggrieved: “Gladly would I have borne tidings, Eli, if I could have done so with safety, but I should have been captured. They have taken Nathan and Miriam, and a veiled maiden rideth in the rear who somehow reminded me of Rachel.”
Hannah clasped Judith’s arm: “Thou sawest Nathan and Miriam? Tell me—” and Judith, who had seen and heard almost everything of the eventful hours just past, told the story.
Meanwhile Miriam had left the village-crowned hills, the fertile valleys, the scattered oak groves; crossed a tree-studded, grassy meadow, a tangle of ferns and brushwood, and descended a gorge in the midst of which tumbled and roared and foamed a stream. The atmosphere seemed heavy with a heat not derived from the sun.
“Hast thou seen the Jordan before, little maid?”
Her answer was lost in the confusion of fording the river. At a place sufficiently shallow the horses were led down the steep and slippery bank, alarmed the moment their feet rested in the soft mud; terrified on reaching the shingly bottom to feel the swift tug of the current and the coldness of the rapid waters; cold after their enforced dip and taking quickly and easily the cliffs and steppes to the broad plateau above, which seemed the higher because of the depression of the Jordan Valley. The wind swept chill out of the snow-covered mountains to the north, toward which they were turning their faces, but after the heaviness of the valley they had just left, the air was exhilarating and fragrant with herbage.