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Aloud he read a minute description of Laodice from the rabbi of the synagogue in Ascalon; under the great seals of the Roman state, he found and read the oath of the prefect, that such a maiden as the rabbi had described had been married before him to Philadelphus Maccabaeus fourteen years before.
When the girl finally finished her selection, the woman begged permission to attend to the camels and getting the beasts on their feet led them together to be tethered. Laodice, assisted by Momus, took up the condemned supplies and flung them one at a time upon the roaring fire.
"Doubtless he will allow you to remain here until you can provide yourself with other shelter." Laodice heard this cold sentence with a chill of fear that was new to her. Faint pictures of hunger and violence, terrifying in the extreme, confronted her. Yet not any of them frightened her more than the offered favor of the Gischalan.
Within this inclosure, wrapped in the coarse mantle of her servant, sat Laodice. She had raised her veil and its misty texture flowed like a web of frost over her brilliant hair and framed her face in cold vapor. In spite of the marks of grief that had exhausted her tears, the fatigue and discomfort, she seemed, to the Maccabee's eyes, more than ever lovely.
Then shrieks broke from the lips of the serving-woman; the hall filled with panic. Hannah leaped to her feet and thrust Laodice toward her father. "Away!" she cried. "The pestilence! The pestilence is upon us!"
When his outraged kinsman put out vengeful hands to seize him, the Maccabee grasped the air. Julian of Ephesus had vanished! Among the rocks at the base of the cliff that sheltered Christian Pella from the rude winds of the Perean mountains, the procurator of the city, Philadelphus Maccabaeus, and his wife, Laodice, sat side by side in the morning sun.
He will not change so long as you are beautiful. This is life, my dear. You may as well prepare for it now." Laodice gazed with wide, terrorized eyes at the Greek. She saw force gathering against her. Amaryllis shaped her device to its end. "And if you do not accept this shelter," she concluded, "what else is there for you?" Hesper, many times her refuge, rose before the hard-pressed girl.
It will not be safe to be near him when his moneyed lady claims him for her own!" "She she " Laodice burst out, "is may be such a woman!" "Such a woman as you! No; she will not be. That is what makes him bad. And now that I bethink me, perhaps it is just as well that you proceed to Jerusalem. He may comfort himself with a sight of you, now and then." "I? I comfort him?" she exclaimed.
"Lady," she said behind her unlifted veil, "I am an unlettered woman and have been accustomed to the instruction of my masters. I am obedient to the laws of our people." "You would have been in less peril to have ridden alone," Laodice sighed. "Our company has been no help to you." "We can not say that confidently. There are worse things than pestilence in the wilderness," the woman replied.
There was a quick savage bark that heightened at the end in an excited yelp of welcome. The shepherd, a dim figure at the head of the flock, turned in time to see his dog leaping upon the Maccabee. "Down, Urge," the shepherd cried. "Joseph, in the name of God," the Maccabee cried, "where is Laodice?"
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