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Updated: June 9, 2025
"What is thy business with Philadelphus?" the woman persisted. Again the Maccabee floundered. It had been easy to invent a story to keep the woman he loved from discovering that he was a married man, but the point in question was different. Now, filled with dismay and indignation, apprehension and reluctance, his fertile mind failed him at the moment of its greatest need.
"The hour for the Maccabee, indeed," Costobarus ruminated. "And the hour for Him whom we all expect," Philip added in a low tone. Costobarus bowed his head. Presently he drew a scroll from the folds of his ample robe. "Hear what Philadelphus writes me: Cæsarea, II Kal. Jul. To Costobarus, greetings and these by messenger; I learn on arriving in this city that Judea is in truth no man's country.
They had neither seen nor heard of a pagan who was young though the white hair of an old man snowed on his temples. So Julian storming within went out into the hills himself, to search. Meanwhile the Maccabee, a light sleeper and readily restored, awoke and found himself alone. The khan-keeper informed him on inquiry that Julian had ridden away.
"You have already lost three days," Julian charged him irritably. "Jerusalem may be besieged; it may be long before I can ride in the wilderness again," the Maccabee answered. "Right; your next journey through this place may be afoot at the end of a chain," Julian averred. The Maccabee raised his brows. "Losing courage at the last end of the journey?" he inquired. "No!
Perilous at best, it seemed the only plan by which he was to get possession of a fortune which even Cæsar would be glad to have. The resolution formed itself in a brain turbulent with passion and desperation. He halted silently back of his cousin and with a sudden flare of intent on his dead white face snatched a dagger from his girdle and drove it between the shoulders of the Maccabee.
Laodice, the Christian and that white-haired trembler in his refuge, saw the Maccabee raise himself to his full height and lifting his sword confront in one grand effort at command a mob of six hundred madmen! Perhaps that manifestation of iron courage and strength, which the crazy lot somehow realized, saved him from death.
"Go, go!" she whispered. "I hear I hear Philadelphus!" He turned from her obediently. "It is not my last hope," he said to himself. "Neither has she suffered her last perplexity in this house. I shall come again." He passed out into the streets of Jerusalem. Beginning with the moment that the Maccabee first entered her hall, Amaryllis struggled with a perplexity.
With the enthusiasm of a Maccabee, if with other weapons, he fought against the bastard culture, which meant self-indulgence and the excessive attention to the body, the idol-worship, the degraded ideas of the Divine power, and the disregard of truth and justice, that were current in the pagan society about him.
The boy made no answer to this; he knew that this white-faced man was wrestling with himself and comment from him was not expected. By the light of the failing fire without, he saw that face sober, take on shadow and grow immeasurably sad. The minutes passed and he knew that the Maccabee would not speak again.
When he awoke again, after many hours, it was night. In the door with his head dropped back between his shoulders gazing up at the sky overhead, sat the boy. "Where," the Maccabee began, "are the rest of you?" The boy turned around quickly, and answered with all seriousness. "I am all here." "Did you," the Maccabee began again, after silence, "care for me alone?"
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