The house of Elkiah became the resting-place of the Jewish hero on the few and brief occasions when he rested anywhere. He was incessant in his watch. For days he would be absent with his brothers scouting the country to the eastward. He commissioned the brightest men as messengers to the tribes not yet allied with him, offering them either peace or war as their Sheikhs might elect. Envoys were sent to the Romans, to the Egyptians. He laid out extensive plans for the restoration and fortification of the city walls. In this he was aided by Dion, who had already attained a certain celebrity as an engineer among the Greeks. For such projects there was urgent call, and for all the resources of Judas' fertile brain. Lycias, the new Governor of Syria, was collecting the remnants of Gorgias' army, compacting them with those of Nicanor and Ptolemy, and enlarging them by daily arriving contingents sent from all parts of Antiochus' kingdom. The Governor quickly marshalled a force of sixty thousand, ready to renew the war. Even these public and threatening affairs did not entirely absorb the attention of Judas. When in Jerusalem he came daily and watched the failing life of the blind child. As the lad's body grew emaciate the blind eyes gained in lustre, the light of his soul flooding them from within, like stars bursting through a fleecy cloud. Judas would sit by the bedside of the sufferer, gazing upon the thinning and whitening face, while his own thoughts were far away among the problems of statecraft and strategy. "Yes," he one day said to Dion, "Caleb's eyes are my oracles, as my father used to say Deborah's were to him. They are to me what I imagine the water of the deep springs is to your Greek priests. In them I sometimes seem to see the lines of coming battle, and the shadows of great events that heaven is preparing to bring to pass." At times Judas would throw himself upon the bed beside his little friend, whose restlessness was calmed when he could pass his tiny, shrunken fingers over the face of the champion. Suddenly the soldier would kiss the child's hot lips, and, without a word, hasten away to the towers or the fields, as if prompted by some inspiration. One day the lad said to Judas: "Big brother, carry me as you used to do in the Fort of the Rocks." "Where shall I take you, little brother?" "Take me to the roof, that I may see the clouds with your eyes--God's banners, father used to call the clouds with their white and gold. And I would see, too, the mountains full of the chariots and horses of God; and hear the winds talk, and tell their strange stories of what is happening everywhere they go. Take me, big brother." The lad lay in Judas' arms behind the parapet, his fingers feebly twining in the thick beard of his giant playmate. The wind came softly from the south. "What was the wind saying to you, little brother?" "It comes from Bethlehem, that I know; and it talks about Bethlehem."