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Updated: June 7, 2025
Lycidas had thought of Zarah when he had listened to the expression, the beauty of holiness. "I will not stay a prisoner here, if I am to be shut out in this stifling little den not only from the world, but from her who is more than the world to me," thought the Greek.
"How Hadassah would have praised and blessed God for this!" reflected Zarah. "Her words were the seeds of truth which fell on the richest of soils, where the harvest now gladdens her child. It was she who first saved the precious life of my Lycidas, and then led his yet more precious soul to the Fount of Salvation!
"The most remote hope of winning Zarah," mused Maccabeus, "were enough to make a man espouse the cause of her people, and renounce all idolatry save idolatry of herself. I must question this Athenian myself. I must examine whether he have embraced the truth independently of earthly motives, and, as a true believer, can indeed be trusted with the most priceless of gems.
"Zarah," he said at last, "there must be no concealment between us. You know in what relation we stand to each other. You have told me what that Gentile has been to Hadassah, and to Abner your father; tell me now, What is he to you?" Zarah struggled to regain her courage, though she knew not how deeply her evident fear of him wounded the spirit of her kinsman.
Zarah now carefully abstained from any part of the collation which she deemed might contain anything which Moses had judged unclean, and chiefly partook of the fruits, which were pure, as God Himself had made them, and which were, of all kinds of food, that most refreshing to her parched and burning lips.
When the tones of the leader's voice were silent, there was for a moment a solemn stillness throughout the martial throng; then from their knees arose the brave sons of Abraham, prepared to "do or die." Her brief but momentous interview with Maccabeus had left a very painful impression upon the mind of Zarah.
"Impossible, impossible," muttered Pollux, rising from his seat as if to depart; but Zarah detected indecision in his tone. She threw herself at his feet, she clasped his knees, she pleaded with passionate fervour, for she deemed that a parent's life and soul were at stake.
Zarah had caught sight of the Greek, and of the venerated form of Hadassah at that momentous crisis; her eyes riveted on them, she had not seen the blow inflicted on her father, who, though mortally wounded, did not instantly fall.
A parent's commands are law to a Hebrew maiden; if there be any sin in what you do, it lies upon me alone." "And think you that I would bring sin upon your head?" said Zarah. "Oh no, that would be to wrong a parent indeed!" "I have such a burden of my own to carry," observed Pollux, bitterly, "that I shall scarcely be sensible of so small an addition to its weight.
"Hold! harm not the girl!" cried a voice which sounded to Zarah strangely familiar, though she knew not where she could possibly have heard it before; and she saw a tall officer in Syrian dress, the same who has been introduced to the reader more than once under the name of Pollux, who appeared to be in command of the assailing party.
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