CHAPTER VI.
The good man, like the bad, must die; but, remembering the lesson of our faith, we say of him and the event, "No matter, he will open his eyes in heaven." Nearest this in life is the waking from healthful sleep to a quick consciousness of happy sights and sounds.
When Judah awoke, the sun was up over the mountains; the pigeons were abroad in flocks, filling the air with the gleams of their white wings; and off southeast he beheld the Temple, an apparition of gold in the blue of the sky.

These, however, were familiar objects, and they received but a glance; upon the edge of the divan, close by him, a girl scarcely fifteen sat singing to the accompaniment of a nebel, which she rested upon her knee, and touched gracefully.

To her he turned listening; and this was what she sang: THE SONG.
"Wake not, but hear me, love! Adrift, adrift on slumber's sea, Thy spirit call to list to me.
Wake not, but hear me, love! A gift from Sleep, the restful king, All happy, happy dreams I bring.
"Wake not, but hear me, love! Of all the world of dreams 'tis thine This once to choose the most divine.
So choose, and sleep, my love! But ne'er again in choice be free, Unless, unless--thou dream'st of me." She put the instrument down, and, resting her hands in her lap, waited for him to speak.

And as it has become necessary to tell somewhat of her, we will avail ourselves of the chance, and add such particulars of the family into whose privacy we are brought as the reader may wish to know.
The favors of Herod had left surviving him many persons of vast estate.

Where this fortune was joined to undoubted lineal descent from some famous son of one of the tribes, especially Judah, the happy individual was accounted a Prince of Jerusalem--a distinction which sufficed to bring him the homage of his less favored countrymen, and the respect, if nothing more, of the Gentiles with whom business and social circumstance brought him into dealing.