“I could avoid them, knowing where they were, by passing by on the other side, and my good Glaucus—the Lord have mercy on him!—was always kind and helpful. He would fetch the water regularly from the fountain, where there was an altar to the Naiad, as they called the demon of the spring, which I could not have avoided. The people used to laugh at him for doing a woman’s work, but he did not heed them. O why was he taken away before he could learn the truth? I think that he would have known it if he could have lived a little longer.” And the poor woman burst into a passion of tears. She was always haunted with this fear of her husband’s fate, and reproached herself with not having been earnest enough in speaking of the truth to her husband. “Peace, my daughter,” said the old man, gently; “the mercies of the Lord are without end, and His ways past finding out. Be sure that He will not forget the kindness that was showed to a daughter of Abraham. But tell me,” he went on, anxious to change the subject—“tell me how we came to find the courts of the Temple desolate and overgrown as though no one had entered them for months? Did you not say that there were sacrifices there, and feasts to the demons whom the Greeks worship?” “Yes, father; it was so for a time. But soon there were few or none to make sacrifices, for the city was utterly impoverished. So the priests, whom Philip the Phrygian and Apollonius—the curse of the Lord be upon him!—brought in to serve at the altars, went elsewhere, for, of a truth, they would have died of hunger had they stayed here. O father, it was a mournful existence; of a truth we were fed with the bread of affliction and the water of affliction.” As they talked Ruth came in with a troubled face. “O Eglah!” she cried, “I did hope that we should have peace and quiet, but there are wars and rumours of wars on every side. This morning letters came to the captain from our brethren in Gilead. That evil Timotheus—would to God he had not escaped out of the hand of Judas!—has gathered together a host of the Ammonites and slain some—a thousand, ’tis said, with their wives and children, and shut up the rest in the fortress of Dametha. And now my husband and my brother are in council with the captain, and I fear me much that they will be sent to the wars, for indeed,” she added, with a touch of a woman’s pride in those that are dear to her, “Judas esteems them highly, and will always have them in places of trust. Nor would I keep them back from helping the Lord’s people. But hark! I hear his step.” As she spoke Seraiah came in from the council. “How is it?” cried Ruth, with trembling voice, her fears again getting the upper hand. “Do you go? and Azariah?” “Yes, my dearest, I go, and next in command to the captain and his brothers.” Ruth flung her arms round her husband’s neck. “Oh! I am proud of you; but yet if you could have stayed, for our little Daniel is so young——” And she could say no more.