"Our blows will never weaken nor our hearts grow faint," he said, "if we have such eloquence and such beauty to inspire us." She drew back a little. His persistent happiness of mood fell cruelly on her flinching heart at that moment. He noted her sudden relapse into dejection, with disappointment. "Do not be sad," he said. "Discomforts do not last for ever." "It is not that," she said in a low voice. "I have buried beloved dead on this journey and I have surrendered all my substance to a pillager." There was the silence of arrested thought. The Maccabee was taken aback and embarrassed. He felt that he was an intruder. But even the flush on her face in restraining emotion made her loveliness more than ever winsome. He let his hand drop softly on hers. But in the genuineness of his sympathy he was not too moved to feel that her hand warmed under his clasp. "The difference between a fool and a blunderer," he said contritely, "is that the blunderer is always sorry for his mistakes. I will go. None has a right to refuse another his hour to weep." He hesitated a moment, as if he would have kissed her hand. She glanced up at him with eyes too filled with the darkness of grief for words. The slow unconscious smile that had worked such perfect transformation that first morning grew in his eyes. It was comfort, compliment and protection all in one. Then he went away into the moonlight. Within a few feet he came upon Julian of Ephesus with immense rancor written on his face. The Maccabee was disturbed. It was not well that this conscienceless man should have discovered that they were traveling near this girl and her old servant. Much as the young man wished to loiter along the road to Jerusalem to keep her in sight while he could, he saw plainly that to defend her from Julian he must ride on and leave her. "Your meal," said Julian, "is as cold as Jugurtha's bath." "I have lost my appetite," the Maccabee said carelessly. "Saddle and let us ride on." At his words, a picture of his own comfortable progress to Jerusalem compared to her long foot-weary tramp for days over the inhospitable hills appeared to him. The instant impulse did not permit himself to argue the immoderation of his care of her. Julian clung to his side until they were ready to depart. Then the Maccabee, using subterfuge to give him opportunity to escape the vigilant eyes of the Ephesian, suddenly clapped his hand to his hip, exclaiming that he had left his weapon at the camp. Before Julian's sneer reached him, he mounted quickly and rode up the hill, meaning to offer his horse to the girl. The bed of coals still glowed cheerily, but the shelter of sheepskins, the old servant and the girl in the tissue of woven moonbeams were gone. He stood still, vexed, disappointed and resentful. "The old incubus has made her go on, purposely, to get rid of me!" he decided finally. "Perpol! He won't!" Chapter VI DAWN IN THE HILLS