nnot believe Lycidas false!" cried out Joab, at the risk of
drawing the tempest of rage upon himself.

"You cannot believe him false, you son of the nether millstone!"
screamed out the furious Jasher, stamping with passion; "as if you were
a match for a wily Greek, born in that idolatrous, base, ungrateful
Athens, that banished her only good citizen, and poisoned her only wise
one!" The fierce prejudices of race were only too easily aroused in
that assembly of Hebrew warriors, and if Jasher were blamed by some of
his auditors, it was for allowing that any Athenian could be either
wise or good.

"Yet hear me for a moment--I must be heard," cried Joab, straining his
voice to its loudest pitch, yet scarcely able to make his words
audible; "Lycidas has been admitted into the Covenant by our priests;
he can give proofs--"

"Who talks of proofs?" exclaimed Jasher, stamping again on the earth.
"Did you never hear of the proofs given by Zopyrus? Know you not how
Babylon, the golden city, fell under the sword of Darius? Zopyrus,
minion of that king, fled to the city which he was besieging, showed
its defenders his ghastly hurts--nose, ears shorn off--and pointed to
the bleeding wounds as _proofs_ that Darius the tyrant, by inflicting
such injuries upon him, had won a right to his deathless hatred.[1]
The Babylonians believed the proofs, they received the impostor, and ye
know the result. Babylon fell, not because the courage of her
defenders quailed, or famine thinned their numbers; not because the
enemy stormed at her wall, or pestilence raged within it; but because
she had received, and believed, and trusted a traitor, who had
sacrificed his own members to gain the opportunity of destroying those
who put faith in his honour! Hebrews! a Zopyrus has now come into our
camp! Will ye open your arms, or draw your swords, to receive him?"

A wild yell of fury arose from the listening throng, so fierce, so
loud, that it drew towards the spot Hebrews from all parts of the
encampment. It drew amongst others the young proselyte, who came eager
to know the cause of the noise and excitement, quite unconscious that
it was in any way connected with himself. As Lycidas made towards the
centre of the crowd, it divided to let him pass into the immediate
presence of Jasher, his accuser and self-constituted judge, and then
ominously closed in behind him, so as to prevent the possibility of his
retreat.

Lycidas had come amongst the