An hour later Judas sat alone in his chamber in the palace on Sion. The stars as they floated by looked through the high window, but did not disturb the soul which at that hour was moving through depths as profound as theirs. The gray dawn alone aroused him--in which there was a poetic propriety; for since the day-spring summons all nature to activity, why should it not awaken the tremendous forces of this great heart for its work in resurrecting a nation? Judas reached out his hand and struck the bronze gong--the same that Apollonius had rung three years before when he was vanquished by the spirit of Deborah in this same hall. "Call the Captains!" His chief officers came with evidence of hasty toilet--for celerity never waited upon formality in the councils of Judas. His sentences, as he addressed them, were laconic, as if he assumed that his hearers had listened at his brain and already knew his thoughts. "Friends, I learn that the men of Edom are moving from their camps on the south. The tribesmen of the Jordan and beyond are preparing to strike us. Tyre and Sidon are enrolling their trained bands. Every man, then, in readiness by the turn of the moon!" With a wave of his hand he dismissed them. The result of this order belongs to history, which tells how the invincible men of Judas, beginning on the south, swung to east, then from east to north, then from north to west, and then from west to south again--the swing of the mighty Hammer of Israel--crushing a hostile tribe at every stroke, until Judah lay quiet within all its desolate borders. No sword gleamed brighter in those days than that of Gershom ben Shattuck, and no foeman gave more desperate battle than Nadan, son of Yusef, Sheikh of Jericho. _Printed in the United States of America_ NOTE.--Judas fell in battle three years later. The still sceptreless rule was then taken by Jonathan, who, with the title of High Priest, consolidated the religious and secular orders, and laid wide and deep the foundation of the Asmonean power--a title taken from the family name of Mattathias, the father of the Maccabees. On the death of Jonathan, Simon the Wise accomplished his purpose of kingship for Israel, and crowned himself. In the seed of Simon the dynasty endured until the last diluted drops of Maccabæan blood drained from the veins of the Herods, and the eyes of the world were turned to one whom they called, not Messiah Malhamah, "The Anointed for War," but Christ, "The Prince of Peace."