"My name!" said Deborah, in well-feigned amazement. "Captain Dion, surely that bruise on your brow tells of some more serious blow you must have received, to have imagined that you heard my name. And have you not found me here?" "Yes, I can give the lie to the rumor about your being in the battle; and I will swear by Jehovah and all the gods, that I know to the contrary, if the story should ever be repeated to your injury among the people of the city." "Do not swear it, Dion. If you believe in our God, keep His commandment which says, 'Thou shalt not take the Name of God in vain,' and for a Greek to swear as you propose to do would surely be in vain." XXVI TO UNMASK THE PRINCESS The panic in Jerusalem soon gave place to a sense of security. This was due not only to the fact that the Maccabæans had not followed up their victory and attacked the city, but also in large measure to the quieting counsel of Captain Dion. "The defeat at Bethhoron," he declared, "was owing not to any superior force of the Jews, but to the folly of General Seron in marching his army so as to invite assault. Indeed, when the forward phalanges recoiled upon those coming after, the Greeks defeated themselves. That disaster might have occurred had no enemy attacked us. But the force that Judas has, while sufficient to start a panic by its sudden irruption under such circumstances, is too small to attempt the capture of the city. His men are only peasants, and without armaments of siege. Upon the walls one man could withstand many assailants; and from within the citadel a woman might resist a company of men. Beside this, intelligence has come that Lysias, the new Governor, has despatched our most noted generals, Ptolemy, Nicanor, and Gorgias, with a force of forty thousand footmen and seven thousand horse to utterly exterminate the Maccabæans. If the rebels elude our new armies, it will be only by leaving Judea, and taking refuge across the Jordan in the mountains of Moab, where they will be as harmless to Jerusalem as are the beasts which infest those wilds." Under such counsel the people were calmed. As the terrible Judas did not appear at the gate of the city--nor, as some imagined, like a bat as big as a cloud, scale the walls with armed men under his wings--life resumed its usual course among the inhabitants. The reaction from fright did not even stop with a general sense of security. The pleasure-loving people sought to recompense their days of abstinence by extravagant indulgence.