Ruth and her husband carried her into the house, and laid her upon her bed in her old chamber. Once there she was able to swallow a little broth which had been hastily prepared, cast one grateful look of recognition at her old mistress, and then fell into a deep sleep. The next morning she awoke, entirely restored to reason, and, though still somewhat weak, able to go about the household tasks in which she had been once employed, and which she resumed at once without a question, and as if, indeed, they had never been interrupted for a day. The three years of misery were entirely blotted out of her memory; nor did any spectre from the past ever come back to trouble her. CHAPTER XXII. WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS. The Feast of Dedication having been kept and made an ordinance in Israel for ever,(19) Judas’s next act was to fortify the restored Temple. It was exposed, even more than the rest of the city, to a sudden attack from the garrison of the fort, which might work irreparable mischief could it gain, even for an hour, possession of the sacred building. Accordingly a high wall, strengthened at intervals by towers, was now erected round it, and a force was told off from the army to watch it. This done, the patriot leader could attend without anxiety to other cares. At Beth-zur a fortress was erected and strongly garrisoned to guard the Eastern frontier especially against the attacks of the Idumeans, who, under their new name, inherited all the old Edomite jealousy of Israel. After personally superintending the erection of this stronghold, Judas marched against other tribes on the east and south, who had been taking advantage of the troublous times to plunder their Jewish neighbours. The Arabs of the Negeb, or South Country, were defeated at a pass near the Dead Sea, which bore the appropriate name of the Pass of the Scorpions; the Ammonites, another tribe whose kinship with the chosen people seems to have embittered their hereditary enmity, were defeated under their Greek leader, Timotheus. Meanwhile life at Jerusalem had been settling down into a peaceful order. The younger of the two priests whom Eglah had befriended had found scope for his energies by joining the army; Shemaiah, the elder, was again an inmate in the house which had sheltered him, where Eglah, who had never forgotten the charity with which he had spoken of her husband, tended him with all the care of a daughter. The old man was never tired of hearing the story of the two dismal years during which he had been in hiding. “Ah, father!” she said to him one day, “you were not so ill off in your poor prison after all. Had you had your liberty you would have seen altars to the false gods in every street. And it was not safe to pass them without showing some sign of reverence.” “And how did you fare, my daughter?” asked the old man.