were laid on herself; and the terrified girl felt as
the gazelle feels under the claws of the tiger! She was too much
alarmed to have breath even to utter a scream.

"Hold! harm not the girl!" cried a voice which sounded to Zarah
strangely familiar, though she knew not where she could possibly have
heard it before; and she saw a tall officer in Syrian dress, the same
who has been introduced to the reader more than once under the name of
Pollux, who appeared to be in command of the assailing party. Zarah,
in her agony of terror, stretched out her hands for protection to one
in whose features, even at that moment, she recognized the Hebrew type.
But Zarah could not appeal for mercy save by that supplicating gesture;
horror so overpowered her senses that she swooned away; and had the
steel then done its cruel work, she would have felt no pain. But the
command of Antiochus had been rather to seize than to slay; and the
soldiers, by the order of Pollux, carried off as their only prisoner a
senseless maiden, leaving the dead body of Abishai on the floor dyed
with his blood.

CHAPTER XIX.

A PRISON.

From her long swoon Zarah awoke with a sensation of indescribable
horror. The cold drops stood on her brow, and there was a painful
tightness at her heart. The poor girl could not at once recall what
had happened, but knew that it was something dreadful. The first image
that rose up in her mind was that of the expiring Abishai: Zarah
shuddered, trembled, raised herself by an effort to a sitting posture,
and wildly gazing around her, exclaimed, "Where am I? what can have
happened?"

The place in which the maiden found herself was almost quite dark, but
as she glanced upwards she could see pale stars gleaming in through a
small and heavily-barred window. She knew that she must be in a Syrian
prison. Pressing both her hands to her forehead, the young captive
recalled the terrible scene of which she had been a witness. "Oh, God
be praised that beloved Hadassah was not there!"

Zarah repeated again and again to herself, as if to strengthen her
grasp on the only consolation which at first offered itself to her
soul. "Abishai's fate is awful--awful!" Zarah shuddered with mingled
compassion and horror. "But oh, it is better, far better for him--my
poor kinsman--that he did not fall into the hands of the enemy alive,
as I have done! That would have been more awful still!"

Zarah was no high-spirited heroine, bu