he light flashing from his helmet in the
fore-front of the battle? Yet was the struggle obstinate; and when the
Syrians were at last forced to retire before the Hebrew heroes, a
number of the troops of Lysias threw themselves into the fortress of
Bethsura, to rally their forces behind its walls, and gather strength
to renew the combat on the following day.

But it was no part of the plan of their active adversary to leave such
a rallying-point to the Syrians, or suffer them from thence to harass
his rear, should he press onwards towards Jerusalem. His victory must
not be incomplete, Bethsura must be his ere darkness should put an end
to the conflict.

"See you yon Syrian banner waving from the tower," cried
Maccabeus,--"who will be the first to tear it down?"

He was answered by a shout from his men. "To the walls! to the walls!"
as the Hebrews pressed hard upon their retreating foes.

Bethsura was not a place of much strength, though the height of its
towers gave to their defenders the power to annoy and distress
assailants with a shower of arrows and other missiles as they rushed to
the assault. Maccabeus, foreseeing that Bethsura itself must become
the scene of the closing struggle, had had scaling-ladders in
readiness, roughly constructed by his own men from trees hewn down by
their battle-axes. With cries and shouts these were now borne onwards
towards the bulwarks of Bethsura, and notwithstanding the fierce
opposition of the Syrians, two of them were planted against the wall.
Who would mount them, who would be the first to climb upwards through
the death-shower of darts, the first to meet the fierce downward blows
and thrusts of those who stood to the defence of the beleaguered
fortress?

Lycidas had borne himself bravely in the battle, he had well maintained
the honour of the land that had withstood the gigantic power of Xerxes;
now his foot was the first on one of the ladders. It was a perilous
moment. The rough spar, with branches fastened transversely at
intervals across it, on which Lycidas was mounting (for the ladder was
little more than this), swayed backwards and forwards with the struggle
between those above to fling it down, and those below to sustain it,
and it was with extreme difficulty that the climber could keep his
footing. Stones and arrows rattled on the shield which the young Greek
held with one arm above his head, as he used the other in climbing; but
Lycidas neither flinched nor