rmed an exception.
Zarah's anxious gaze rested for a moment on his face with an imploring
look of entreaty, which might have touched a harder heart than his.

"I brook no more idle delay!" cried Antiochus; "as you love your life,
do sacrifice at once to my god."

"I cannot--I dare not!" exclaimed the young maid. Faint as was her
utterance of the words, they were heard distinctly, so great was the
silence which prevailed through the assembly in that marble hall.

The answer surprised Antiochus and his courtiers.

"Ha! there is some resistance in the willow-wand then, after all!"
cried the king, half amused and half angry. "I warrant me tough boughs
grow on the tree from which that slender twig has sprung. Tell me,
fair rebel," he continued, "your name and lineage, and the place of
your birth."

Zarah had firmly resolved that, come what might, she would betray no
friend; above all, that she would never draw down the fire of
persecution upon the house of Hadassah. In the midst of all the misery
which she was enduring from personal fear, Zarah forgot not this
resolution.

"My name is Zarah; I was born in Bethsura; my father was called Abner,"
faltered forth the young maid.

Pollux involuntarily started and gasped, as if every word had been a
live coal dropped upon his bare breast. It was well for him then that
all eyes, even those of Lysimachus, were fixed at that moment on Zarah.

"Is your father living?" inquired the king, who, in the common name of
Abner, did not recognize the almost forgotten one previously borne by a
favourite.

"I know not," was the reply.

"Was he not with you at the rebellious meeting?" asked Antiochus
Epiphanes.

"No; I went with my uncle, who was slain: he was my only companion
thither," said the trembling maiden, thankful to be able with truth to
say what would bring no person into peril.

There was a brief pause, to Zarah inexpressibly awful; then Antiochus
Epiphanes, he who had looked on the dying agonies of Solomona and her
sons, said in his stern voice of command, "I am not wont to bid thrice,
and woe to those who presume to neglect my bidding. Throw incense on
that fire, or the consequences be upon your own head. Others have
experienced ere this what it is to brave my displeasure and disobey my
command."

Bewildered and terrified, Zarah suffered, as if scarcely conscious of
the import of the act, a few grains of incense to be put into her hand,
then, recovering her s