"Yes," replied his sister, "for Esaias says, 'The sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand in the cockatrice's den.' But that is to be when Jerusalem is redeemed by a new David. God grant that your safety from these reptiles may mean that glorious days are near at hand. The Deliverer must come. He must come. Maybe we shall see Him, Caleb." So they talked in whispers while the aperture grew dim with approaching night. Caleb and Deborah did not venture to come out of the old city quarry until darkness had fully fallen, and the ray of a star shot its salutation to them through the crevice. When they emerged they stood for a long time close to the wall, screened by the bushes. "How large the stars look!" whispered Deborah. "They hang as in mid-air; the constellations like ear-rings and necklaces on the invisible angels. They seem nearer than the camp-fires and tent lanterns of the Greeks on the hills yonder. So let us trust Heaven's help is nearer to us than our enemies." "Amen!" rejoined Caleb. Deborah glanced upward at the majestic march of what Caleb said were "God's Helmets," and then along the line of the Greek encampment, as she exclaimed, "O stars that fought in their courses against Sisera, fight against Apollonius!" Caleb started, pressing his sister's hand. "Are the stars moving, sister?" "No, child; it is but the night winds warring against the high walls of the city. The stars hear no command of the Lord as yet." "But listen!" again interposed the excited child. "No, that is only the wind among the olives in the old garden of Kedron," replied Deborah. "But was there not once the 'sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees' that told David the Lord went before him to battle?" quoted the child. "Oh, if God would be to us as thy faith, my child!" and Deborah stooped to kiss his forehead as they hurried away. It was not difficult to avoid the soldiers, for, with the exception of an occasional sentry posted along the high road, the companies kept within their various camps. The Greeks had learned lessons in caution during their brief occupancy of Palestine such as had not been needed in the other countries they had subjugated. It was quite a common thing in the neighborhood of Jerusalem for sentinels never to return from their beats. Small companies of guards sometimes disappeared mysteriously, as if swallowed by earthquakes which made no rumble and closed their lips in silence. Even close to the camps men dropped in their tracks, while a stone, the size of one's fist, went clattering over the ground, leaving its mark in a broken skull or a mangled face; for the Jewish herdsmen were still as expert with the sling as they were in the days of David. Rumor attributed many of these daring exploits to a single family, five young men, the sons of a priest in Modin, chief of whom in this outlawry was Judas, reputed a giant.