"More money? Not an obole until your job is finished. We cannot depend upon the fool Cleon. Go with him. Stick to his heels. He cannot be trusted by himself. Ben Shattuck is in Jerusalem. He is called Dion,--a captain once in the Greek guard. But he has scented out his own Jewish blood, and will go back to it, like a dog to his vomit. Send proof that you have executed your business with him, or, by the tail of Satan, I will have you accused of the crimes you have already committed." This letter was unsigned. "I should know that writing," said Dion. "It is none other than that of Menelaos." "The same, no doubt," said Ephraim, studying it carefully. "I could tell you more of that Priest than has yet been published. But bring not this reprobate into the city. Maccabæus is cleansing the place, and would not abide such foulness. My counsel is that you deal with him here." "Leave him to us," shouted the crowd. In spite of Dion's remonstrance they tied the living man to the body of his dead confederate, and carried them both down to the Valley of Hinnom. What things were there done may not be written. L THE VENGEANCE OF JUDAS It required no especial acuteness on the part of Judas to discern the meaning of that tableau he had witnessed in the court of Elkiah's house, when Deborah stood hand in hand with Dion. It was clearly as significant to him as the fabled scene in which Eros awakens Psyche with a kiss would have been to Agathocles. He had also overheard enough of the General's story to discover that, if Dion were his rival for the affection of Deborah, he himself, though of the blood of Mattathias, which had been kept pure from foreign taint through all generations, had in this respect no advantage over his competitor. As Gershom ben Shattuck, Dion could satisfy the strictest interpreter of the Law. The Prophet Nehemiah himself could have found no flaw in Shattuck's line, with all that Reformer's zealotry against mixed marriages. Strong man that Judas was, the keen eyes of Meph, who had watched him as he came out of Elkiah's doorway that day, noted that the giant staggered a little, just for an instant. Others remarked that the great man seemed unusually absorbed with his own thoughts, and did not return their salutation as was his custom. "A big raid, doubtless, to clean out the tribesmen from around Hebron; or a campaign in the direction of Antioch itself," a captain of the guard was overheard to say. "Or something as momentous," was the reply of a comrade, "for it takes a heavy project to press Judas' head that far down upon his shoulders." Judas shut himself up in his private chamber.