“The whole land is in tumult.[38] Blood and horror are under every roof from Lebanon to Idumea. The Roman sword is out, and it falls with cruel havoc; but the Jewish dagger pays it home, and the legions quail before the naked valor of the peasantry. Yet what is valor or patriotism to us now? We are in our grave!” [Sidenote: Another Chance of Escape] The thought of my family exposed to the miseries of a ferocious war only kindled my eagerness to escape from this den of oblivion. It was evening, and the melancholy moon threw the old feeble gleam on the water which had so long been to me the only mirror of her countenance. I suddenly observed the light darkened by a figure stealing along the edge of the pool. It approached, and the words were whispered: “It is impossible to break open the door from without while the guard is on the watch; but try whether it can not be opened from within.” A crowbar was pushed into the loophole; its bearer, the slave, who had escaped by swimming, jumped down and was gone. I left Jubal where he lay, lingered at the door till all external sounds ceased, and then made my desperate attempt. I was wasted by confinement, but the mind is force. I labored with furious effort at the mass of bolt and bar, and at length felt it begin to give way. I saw a star, the first for two long years, twinkling through the fracture. Another hour’s labor unfixed the huge hinge, and I felt the night air, cool and fragrant, on my cheek. I now grasped the last bar, and was in the act of forcing it from the wall when the thought of Jubal struck me. There was a struggle of a moment in my mind. To linger now might be to give the guard time to intercept me. I was hungering for liberty. It was to me at that moment what water in the desert is to the dying caravan—the sole assuaging of a frantic thirst, of a fiery and consuming fever of the soul. If the grains of dust under my feet were diamonds, I would have given them to feel myself treading the dewy grass that lay waving on the hillside before me. A tall shadow passed along. It was that of a mountain shepherd, spear in hand, guarding his flock from the wolves. He stopped at a short distance from the dungeon, and, gazing on the moon, broke out with a rude but sweet voice into song. The melody was wild, a lamentation over the fallen glories of Judea, “whose sun was set, and whose remaining light, sad and holy as the beauty of the moon, must soon decay.” The word freedom mingled in the song, and every note of that solemn strain vibrated to my heart. The shepherd passed along. [Sidenote: The Ridicule of the Guard]