he was in my arms! The garrison marched out. I restrained the violence of their conquerors, irritated by the memory of years of insult. Not a hair of a Roman head was touched. They were led down to the valley of Kedron, where they were disarmed, and thence sent without delay under a safeguard to their countrymen in Idumea. In one night the Holy City was cleared of every foot of the idolater. CHAPTER X _The Fall of Onias_ [Sidenote: After the Conflict] While the people were in a state of the wildest triumph, the joy of their leaders was tempered by many formidable reflections. The power of the enemy was still unshaken; the surprise of a single garrison, tho a distinguished evidence of what might be done by native valor, was trivial on the scale of a war that must be conducted against the mistress of the civilized world. The policy of Rome was known; she never gave up a conquest while it could be retained by the most lavish and persevering expenditure of her strength. Her treasury would be stripped of every talent, and Italy left without a soldier, before she would surrender the most fruitless spot, an acre of sand or a point of rock in Judea. I went forth, but not among the leaders nor among the people; I turned away equally from the council and the triumph. A deeper feeling urged me to wander round those courts where my spirit had so often turned in my exile. The battle had reached even there, and the pollution of blood was on the consecrated ground. The Roman soldiers, in their advance, had driven the people to take refuge in the cloisters of the Temple, and the dead lying thickly among the columns showed how fierce even that brief and partial struggle had been. With a torch in my hand, I trod through those heaps of what once was man to have one parting look at the scene where I had passed so many blameless hours. I stood before the porch of my own cloister, almost listening for the sound of the familiar voices within. The long interval of time was compressed into an instant. [Sidenote: The Return Home of Salathiel]