The fortune of the day continued to declare in favour of the patriots; but Apollonius himself, surrounded by a picked force of mercenaries, still held his ground. Shortly after noon Azariah and Micah, who had kept close together during the battle, and had both performed prodigies of valour, gathering a company of their immediate followers, made a determined rush in his direction. The bodyguard, terrified by the fierceness of this onset, wavered and fled, leaving but three or four faithful attendants, who refused to leave their commander. The Greek recognized Azariah, and called to him by his name. “Azariah, if you think that I have wronged you, I do not refuse you the opportunity of revenge. Come out from your companions, and I will meet you alone. You are a brave man, and would not take a soldier at unfair odds.” Azariah did not deign to answer; but one of his comrades replied, “Dog of a heathen! you forget where you are. We are not contending in your foolish games: we are the avengers of blood—the innocent blood which you have shed; and we will slay you as men slay a venomous snake. Such equity as you have dealt to others, we will show to you. Was it in fair fight that you slew women and children?” Apollonius looked on the ring of scowling faces that surrounded him, and saw that there was no mercy or even what he would have called the courtesy of war to be hoped from them. “I only wish,” he said, “that I had rooted out the whole cursed brood from the earth, and burnt the den of thieves which you call your city, and laid the shrine of the demon whom you call your God level with the ground!” “Silence, blasphemer!” cried Azariah, as he whirled his sword over his head. It was not the almost worthless weapon, with its dented edge and broken hilt, that he had carried into the battle. Early in the day he had cut down a Greek officer, and taken the sword of the dead man in exchange for his own. As he spoke he beckoned to his countrymen. They stood back, even Micah recognizing the right of the husband to strike the first blow at the murderer of his wife. Apollonius raised his sword to parry the stroke which he expected to be aimed at his head. With a rapid change of movement his adversary changed the blow into a thrust, and drove the point of his weapon through the Greek’s heart. Azariah was drawing out his weapon from the corpse, when Judas, who had been hastening to the spot not without some hope of himself crossing swords with the hated Apollonius, came up. “A mighty weapon that!” he exclaimed, as the conqueror wiped the blade on the dead man’s tunic. “Let me take it in my hands.” He poised it and judged its balance, tried the edge, and then narrowly scanned the markings on the blade. “Ah!” said he, “how came you by this sword? I had observed”—and indeed his eagle eye noted every detail—“that yours was but a poor weapon, unworthy of your strength, and I wished to find something better for you.”