ptable to the Most
High," said the brave muleteer; "but as for yon Syrian, son though he
may be of the Lady Hadassah, I care not to lay his bones amongst those
of martyrs. I trow he was nothing but a traitor."

"He died by the hand of a Syrian, he died saving a Hebrew maiden, he
died in his mother's arms," said Lycidas, with tender regard for the
feelings of Zarah, who would he knew be sensitive in regard to respect
paid to the corpse of her parent. "Deny him not a grave with his
people."

Joab merely shrugged his shoulders in reply, laid his hand on the
halter of his mule, and departed.

On the following night, Lycidas found himself again in that
olive-girdled spot which he had such reason to remember. He stood
under that tree behind the bending trunk of which he had crouched for
concealment on the night when he had first seen Zarah.

The ground was very hard from the long drought. Joab, and two
companions whom he had brought to assist in the perilous service, had
much difficulty in preparing a grave.

"We need the strong arm of Maccabeus here," observed one of the men,
stopping to brush the beaded drops from his brow.

"Maccabeus is employed in making graves for his enemies, not for his
friends," was the muleteer's stern reply.

Thick heavy clouds obscured the starless sky, not a breath of wind was
stirring, the air felt oppressively close and sultry even at the hour
of midnight. A single torch was all the light which the grave-diggers
dared to employ while engaged on their dangerous work. In almost
perfect darkness were the remains of Hadassah and her unhappy son
lowered into the dust. There was no silver moonlight streaming between
the stems of the olives, as on the occasion of the martyrs' burial, nor
was Zarah present to throw flowers into the open grave. With her the
powers of nature had given way under the prolonged strain which they
had had to endure; the poor girl lay in her desolate home, too ill to
be even conscious of the removal from it of the remains over which she
had watched and mourned as long as she had been capable of doing either.

It was strange to Lycidas to be, as it were, only representative of
Hadassah's family at the funeral of herself and her son,--he, who was
not only no relative, but a foreigner in blood, and in religion an
alien; but it was a privilege which he valued very highly, and which he
would not have resigned to have held the chief place in the most
pompous ceremo