h which the sight of an
idol always inspired pious Jews.

When the Syrians had passed the travellers, and the clatter of their
arms had died away in the distance, the widow wrung her hands and
exclaimed, "Yonder ride Apelles and his men of war to Modin, to do the
bidding of the tyrant; and they bear the accursed thing with them, to
be set up on high and worshipped. Alas! they will compel all the
Hebrews at Modin to bow down to their idol of stone."

"Perhaps not," said Judas, calmly.

"All men will be forced to offer sacrifice," cried the woman; "there
will be no way of escaping the pollution."

"Solomona and her sons found one way," observed the Asmonean, "and God
may provide yet another."

The traveller had now reached the door of the widow's humble dwelling.
Judas set down his living burden, and the mother thanked the kind
stranger, and asked him to come in and rest.

"I cannot abide here," replied Judas; "a long journey is yet before me;
I must be at Modin this night."

"At Modin!" exclaimed the astonished woman, glancing up at the worn
weary countenance of the speaker. "Why, the horsemen will scarcely
reach Modin this night, unless, indeed, the king's business be urgent."

"My King's business is urgent," said the Asmonean, as he tightened his
girdle around him, and with a grave, courteous salutation to the woman,
he went on his way.

The widow watched his princely form for some time in silence, then
exclaimed, "That can be none other than Judas, the son of Mattathias;
there is not a second Hebrew such as he. Ah, my Terah," she added,
addressing herself to her son, "there is a man whom the Syrians will
not frighten."

"He will rather frighten the Syrians," said the boy.

Many a time was that childish saying repeated in after-days, as if it
had been prophetic, when Judah had long had rest from her foes, and
Terah himself was an old man. When he sat beneath his own vine and
fig-tree, no man making him afraid, he never wearied describing to his
grand-children that form which had made the earliest impression which
his memory had retained. He would speak with kindling enthusiasm of
the princely man who had taken him in his arms and carried him on his
shoulders--who had been as tender to a sick child, as he had afterwards
been terrible to Israel's foes.

The sun had just sunk when the foot of the Asmonean trod the green
valley of Sharon. It was well that from thence every step of the way
was familiar