“Small gain would that be to our people. The fury of the Babylonians would grow sixfold. If the yoke is hard to bear now, what then?”
“Yet will Belshazzar truly break his promise?” demanded Isaiah, plucking at the last straw of hope.
“Promise?” Daniel laughed grimly. “He will break ten thousand oaths, when they stand betwixt him and a passion. Avil-Marduk urges him each day to ruin me and mine, as a lesson to the rest of our people. The Jews are to be driven like sheep to the ziggurat, and forced to blaspheme Jehovah. Alas! When I think of the plight of our nation, the dangers of a few of us seem but as the first whisperings of a mighty storm! If no succour comes, Ruth and you and I are utterly undone; and our people will forget its God, as He in His just wrath seems to have forgotten them.”
“And is there no hope?” groaned Isaiah in his despair.
Before Daniel could answer, a sweet girlish voice sounded, singing from the upper casement, over the court. The two men stood in silence.
“My beloved spake and said unto me,
‘Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone:
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of the singing of birds is come,