held him to be
in league with evil spirits. He was a tall, stalwart man, and carried a
staff of oak about six feet long, as a support during his travels. It
had somehow come to be understood that, although Beniah was
pre-eminently a man of peace, it was nevertheless advisable to treat him
with civility or to keep well out of the range of that oaken staff.
Possibly this opinion may have been founded on the fact that, on one
occasion, three big runaway Phoenician seamen, who thought they would
prefer a life in the woods to a life on the ocean wave, had one evening
been directed to Beniah's hut as a place where strangers were never
refused hospitality when they asked it with civility. As those three
seamen made their appearance in the town that same evening, in a very
sulky state of mind, with three broken heads, it was conjectured that
they had omitted the civility--either on purpose or by accident. Be
this as it may, Beniah and his six-foot staff had become objects of
profound respect.

Evening was drawing on and Beniah was sitting on a stool beside his open
door, enjoying the sunshine that penetrated his umbrageous retreat, and
reading the papyrus scroll already referred to, when the figure of a
woman approached him with timid, hesitating steps. At first the Hebrew
did not observe her, but, as she drew nearer, the crackling of branches
under her light footsteps aroused him. He looked up quickly, and the
woman, running forward, stood before him with clasped hands.

"Oh! sir," she exclaimed, "have pity on me! I come to claim your
protection."

"Such protection as you need and I can give you shall have, my daughter;
but it is a strange request to make of such a man, in such a place, and
at such a time. Moreover, your voice is not quite strange to me," added
the old man with a perplexed look. "Surely I have heard it before?"

"Ay, Beniah, you know my voice and have seen my face," said the woman,
suddenly removing her shawl and revealing to the astonished eyes of the
old man the pretty head and face of Branwen with her wealth of curling
auburn hair.

"Child," exclaimed the Hebrew, rising and letting fall his roll, while
he took her hand in both of his, "what folly have you been guilty of,
for surely nothing but folly could move you thus to forsake the house of
your friends?"

"Ay, father, you say truth," returned the girl, her courage returning as
she noted the kindly tone of the old man's voice. "Folly is i