There was no incident in the Maccabee’s long struggle through the inky blackness of the tunnel leading under Moriah.

It was night when the first new air from the outside world reached him.  So he rushed into great open darkness, lighted with stars, before he knew that he had emerged from the underground passage.

Entire silence after the turmoil which had shaken Jerusalem for many months fell almost like a blow upon his unaccustomed ears.  The air was sweet.  He had not breathed sweet air since May.  The hills were solitary.  Week in and week out, he had never been away from the sound of groaning thousands.  Not since he had assumed his disguise to Laodice in the wilderness had he been close to the immemorial repose of nature.  All his primitive manhood rushed back to him, now infuriated with a fear that his love was the spoil of another.

All instinct became alert; all his intelligence and resource assembled to his aid.  It came to him as inspiration always occurs at such times, that if the pair proceeded rationally, they would move toward a secure place at once.  Pella occurred to him in a happy moment.

He took his bearings by the stars and hurried north and east.

He came upon a road presently, almost obliterated by a summer’s drift of dust and sand.  It had been long since any one had gone up that way to Jerusalem.  There was no moon to show him whether there were any recent marks of fugitives fleeing that way.

He did not expect that Julian of Ephesus would have courage to halt within sight of the glow on the western horizon which was the burning from the Temple.  He expected the Ephesian to flee far and long, and in that consciousness of the cowardice of his enemy he based his hope.

But he ran tirelessly, seeking right and left, led on by instinct toward the Christian city in the north.

At times, his terror for Laodice made him cry out; again, he made violent pictures of his revenge upon Julian; and at other moments, he believed, while drops stood on his forehead from the effort of faith, that his new Christ would save her yet.  There were moments when he was ready to die of despair, when he wondered at himself attempting to trace Julian with all the directions of wild Judea to invite the fugitives.  Why might they not have fled toward Arabia as well, or even toward the sea?  Perhaps they had not gone far, but had hidden in the rock, and had been left behind.  Conflicting argument strove to turn him from his path, but the old instinct, final resource after the mind gives up the puzzle, kept him straight on the road to Pella.

He came upon the rear of a flock of sheep, heading away from him.  A Natolian sheep-dog, galloping hither and thither in his labor at keeping them moving, scented the new-comer.  There was a quick savage bark that heightened at the end in an excited yelp of welcome.  The shepherd, a dim figure at the head of the flock, turned in time to see his dog leaping upon the Maccabee.