“No! I saw them perish. I heard their dying cry. I drove them to destruction,” was the only answer that my withering lips could utter. I remembered the horrors of the storm; the desperate efforts of the merchant galley to escape; its fatal disappearance. Faintly, and with many a successive agony, I gave the melancholy reasons for my belief. My auditors listened with fear and trembling. “There is now no use in sorrow,” said Jubal sternly, “and as little in struggle. I too have lived until the light that brightened my dreary hours is extinguished. I too have known the extremities of passion. If suffering could have atoned for my offenses, I have suffered. A thousand years of existence could not teach me more. Here let us die.” He unsheathed his poniard. My young companion, in the anxiety of the moment, forgetting the presence of a stranger, flung back the veil which had hitherto covered her face and figure, and clasping my raised arm, said in a tone so low, yet penetrating, that it seemed the whisper of my own conscience: [Sidenote: Naomi’s Reprimand] “Has death no fears?” She fixed her eyes on me and waited breathlessly for the answer. “Daughter of beauty,” said Jubal, as a smile of admiration played on his sad features, “thoughts like ours are not for the lovely and the young. May the Heaven that has stamped that countenance be your protection through many a year! But to the weary, rest is happiness, not terror. Prince of Naphtali, this fair maiden’s presence forbids darker thoughts; we must speed her on her way to security before we can think of ourselves and our misfortunes.” “The daughter of Ananus,” said she, in atone of heroic pride, “has no earthly fears. The boldest warrior of Israel never died more boldly than that venerable parent. Within his sacred robes was the heart of a soldier, a patriot, and a king. Let me die for a cause like his; at the foot of the altar, let my blood be poured out for my country; let this feeble form sink in the ruins of the Temple, and death will be of all welcome things the most welcome. But I would not die for a fantasy, for idleness, for nothing. Put up that weapon, warrior, and let us go forth and see whether great things are not yet to be done.” She significantly pointed toward Jerusalem. “It is too late,” said Jubal, glancing with a sigh at his own wasted form. “What?” said the heroine; “is it too late to be virtuous, but not too late to be guilty? Too late to resist the enemies of our country, but not too late to make ourselves worthless to our holy cause? If Heaven demands an account of every wasted talent and misspent hour, what fearful account will be theirs who make all talents and all hours useless at a blow?”