e astonished Rufinus. Close
behind her came an equally excited lad who, when he saw the stricken
body of his father on the marble street, flung himself weeping upon it.
But Bath Zabbai's eyes flashed still more angrily:

"Assassin, murderer!" she cried; "you have slain my kinsman and
Odhainat's father. How dare you; how dare you!" she repeated vehemently,
and then, flushing with deeper scorn, she added: "Roman, I hate you!
Would that I were a man. Then should all Palmyra know how----"

"Scourge these children home," broke in the stern Rufinus, "or fetch
them by the ears to their nurses and their toys. Let the boys and girls
of Palmyra beware how they mingle in the matters of their elders, or in
the plots of their fathers. Men of Palmyra, you who to-day have dared
to think of rebellion, look on your leader here and know how Rome deals
with traitors. But, because the merchant Odaenathus bore a Roman name,
and was of Roman rank--ho, soldiers! bear him to his house, and let
Palmyra pay such honor as befits his name and station."

The struggling children were half led, half carried into the sculptured
atrium(1) of the palace of Odaenathus which, embowered in palms and
vines and wonderful Eastern plants, stood back from the marble colonnade
on the Street of the Thousand Columns. And when in that same atrium
the body of the dead merchant lay embalmed and draped for its "long
home,"(2) there, kneeling by the stricken form of the murdered father
and kinsman, and with uplifted hand, after the vindictive manner of
these fierce old days of blood, Odaemathus and Zenobia swore eternal
hatred to Rome.

(1) The large central "living-room" of a Roman palace.

(2) The Palmyreans built great tower-tombs, beautiful in architecture
and adornment, the ruins of which still stand on the hill slopes
overlooking the old city. These they called their "long homes," and you
will find the word used in the same sense in Ecclesiastes xii., 5.

Hatred, boys and girls, is a very ugly as it is a very headstrong fault;
but as there is a good side even to a bad habit, so there is a hatred
which may rise to the heighth of a virtue. Hatred of vice IS virtue;
hatred of tyranny is patriotism. It is this which has led the world from
slavery to freedom, from ignorance to enlightenment, and inspired the
words that have found immortality alike above the ashes of Bradshaw
the regicide and of Jefferson the American. Rebellion to tyrants is
obedience to God.