Their homes in flames, they themselves massacred, their women and children dragged off to be the slaves of the victors, a poor remnant left to die of starvation among the wasted fields or to become wild men of the rocks! All these things they looked upon as a mere tale, a romance such as their local poets repeated in the evenings of a wet season, dim and far-off events which might have happened to the Canaanites and Jebusites and Amalekites in the ancient days whereof the book of their Law told them, but which could never happen to _them_, the comfortable Abati.

In that book the Israelites always conquered in the end, although the Philistines, alias Fung, sat at their gates.

For it will be remembered that it includes no account of the final fall of Jerusalem and awful destruction of its citizens, of which they had little if any knowledge.
So it came about that our recruiting parties, perhaps press gangs would be a better term, were not well received.

I know it, for this branch of the business was handed over to me, of course as adviser to the Abati captains, and on several occasions, when riding round the villages on the shores of their beautiful lake, we were met by showers of stones, and were even the object of active attacks which had to be put down with bloodshed.

Still, an army of five or six thousand men was got together somehow, and formed into camps, whence desertions were incessant, once or twice accompanied by the murder of officers.
"It's 'opeless, downright 'opeless, Doctor," said Quick to me, dropping his h's, as he sometimes did in the excitement of the moment.