last of the Sanhedrin, was dead.
Deborah had essayed to follow her father when his captors took him from his house. A Greek officer seized her and forced her back.
"By all the gods of Greek and Jew, you shall not go!"
The speaker was Dion.
For a little her resolution seemed to yield before the imperiousness of her friend. But her spirit was as a Damascus blade which, suddenly bent, springs back into shape. With a wild cry, "I will go to my father; they shall not harm him!" she broke from Dion. His stronger arms regained her.
"You will not be harmed if you stay here," Dion said; "but both you and your father will perish if you go. None but I can save you, Deborah. By my love I entreat."
"Your love! your love!" There was utter contempt in her tone. "You, a hired slaughterer of our people!"
"Nay, then by my strength you shall not go."
He grasped her wrists. The might of her soul was imparted to her arms, and she had nearly freed herself. It required a rough grip of even the athlete's strong hands to detain her. His hard fingers deeply indented her softer flesh. Her face was contorted with pain. Dion relaxed his hold, but not enough to allow her to escape.
So close they stood that their breaths mingled. If soul were breath, as the one Hebrew word for both signifies, it might be that their spirits touched and mingled also; for the fire slowly died from her eyes.
"You are stronger than I," she said, with panting breath.
"Forgive my use of force," replied Dion; "but I had to choose between offending and saving you. I have seen too many cruelties to dare to let you go from the door."
Deborah's look searched Dion to the heart. She spoke with slow accents, as if uncertain whether to venture the words:
"I will trust you, though a Greek. Let no harm come to my father."
"If man can save him, I will. But do you pledge me, Deborah, that you will not go to the streets. A flower would be safer thrown there under the feet of the mob than you among the soldiers. Pledge me, I beg you; pledge me."
"Then I will wait. But fly! oh, Dion, fly! Your word! Your sword if need be! My father! Oh, my father!"
Dion was gone.
As the Greek hurried away only the arm of the old servant Huldah prevented Deborah falling to the pavement. She moved close to the street door, but did not open it. There she stood, not unlike the statue of a runner whose whole attitude shows flight while the feet are motionless. She had almost broken her pledge and gone after Dion, but something held her back. Was it her word? She did not think of that. It was rather the word of the Greek; for had he not said, "If man can save him, I will"? She saw that in this man of hated race was the only hope. If he should fail, then God had willed the worst, and she would submit.
Submit? To what? To grief? To bereavement? Yes. To insult? Perhaps to death, for the assailants of her father would not spare his child.
But there was another submission she deliberately contemplated. It was submission to the overmastering passion which had been born last night amid the ruins of the house of Ben Isaac—to become a minister of vengeance for her people. She seemed to hear her father's voice above the din of the street calling her to avenge his name. The shades of the martyrs of Israel in her excited imagination trooped from Sheol, and stood around her as if to lay their hands upon her in ordination to a life entirely devoted to patriotism and religion; devoted, whether with her hands red in the blood of Israel's enemies, or white with nursing service of Israel's distressed people, she knew not, she cared not.
She was aroused from her reverie by the voice of Caleb.
"Sister, shall we not flee? Death is over the house. They have slain our father. I but now heard the passers-by say, 'Elkiah is dead.'"
"Flee, child? Whither can we flee? The angel of destruction hovers over us, his wings black, oh, so black! and over all the city, and over all the land. We are safe for the moment only here. We must wait on the Lord, and—on the Greek!"
"Has fear driven away your memory, sister dear?" said Caleb. "There are passages from our home into the great quarry which underlies the city."
"True, child, but we have never learned them."
"But I have. I go where those who can see find no way. From the cellar of our house a way opens into the cellar of our neighbor Moses, and from that into the cellar of Omri. They both fled that way. I heard them beg father to escape with them, but he would not. He declared that he would die in Jerusalem rather than flee so long as the altar of the Lord stood on Moriah. But the altar has fallen, sister; the people in the streets just now said that not a stone of it stood any longer. Were our father here, he would now flee. Come! Benjamin will be safe, since he has become as one of the Greeks, and Dion will care for him. Come! I can guide you, and God will guide me as He always has done. Come!"
"Nay, child, the daughter of Elkiah cannot leave her house while her father lives. He will return—or Dion."
"But our father will not come again," urged the child. "Did I not hear them say, 'The Jew is dead'? Come!"
"I will not believe it until Dion returns and tells me with his own lips. They will not, they dare not kill my father. Besides, I have given the Greek my word."
"Your word to a Greek! What is there in that?"
"True, only my word to a Greek! To a Greek! Then let us go for your sake, child."
She followed the blind boy as he darted across the court to the door which opened into the servants' apartment, and thence into the cellar. At the entrance she stopped.
"Nay, child, I cannot go. I have given him my word."
"Trust not the Greek," cried Caleb. "He will not come back. He dare not if he would. They would kill him if he befriended us or our father. But hark!"
The blind boy stood in an attitude of listening. Then he cried excitedly, "Aye! He comes. I hear Captain Dion's voice in the street. He has turned the corner—now he is at the door."
Dion stood before them.
For a little he was speechless, as if the words he would speak were too cruel to utter. He did not even lift his eyes to the young woman's face.
"Do not speak, sir!" said Deborah. "I know it all. My father has been slain by your people."
"Nay, not slain," replied the Greek. "Your father's God has taken him. As Zeus lives—as Jehovah lives—Elkiah died as only the greatest and best of men can die; no hand struck the blow. On the steps of the altar of his God he himself gave up his life. The gods take the breath of such men with a kiss."
Deborah bowed herself upon the pavement.
"Aye, he was a sacrifice. Oh, my father!" Then she rose. Her eyes seemed to see the ascended spirit as she said slowly:
"Now I swear by thy white locks—by the altar of thy broken heart! I, too, will be a sacrifice!"
The Greek was paralyzed by the sense of his helplessness to say or do anything to mitigate the woman's woe. Though he knew not what it meant, he knew that there was a
