oldiers. Perhaps the leaders of his people did not yet know
how vast was the military power that threatened them, and undervalued the
danger in which their position placed them. But he saw it, and could give
them every information. Haste was necessary, and he felt as though he had
gained wings in this race with the storm.

The village of Pihahiroth was soon gained, and while dashing by it
without pausing, he noticed that its huts and tents were deserted by men
and cattle. Perhaps its inhabitants had fled with their property to a
place of safety before the advancing Egyptian troops or the hosts of his
own people.

The farther he went, the more cloudy became the sky,--which here so
rarely failed to show a sunny vault of blue at noonday,--the more
fiercely howled the tempest. His thick locks fluttered wildly around his
burning head, he panted for breath, yet flew on, on, while his sandals
seemed to him to scarcely touch the ground.

The nearer he came to the sea, the louder grew the howling and whistling
of the storm, the more furious the roar of the waves dashing against the
rocks of Baal-zephon. Now--a short hour after he had left the tower--he
reached the first tents of the camp, and the familiar cry: "Unclean!" as
well as the mourning-robes of those whose scaly, disfigured faces looked
forth from the ruins of the tents which the storm had overthrown,
informed him that he had reached the lepers, whom Moses had commanded to
remain outside the camp.

Yet so great was his haste that, instead of making a circuit around their
quarter, he dashed straight through it at his utmost speed. Nor did he
pause even when a lofty palm, uprooted by the tempest, fell to the ground
so close beside him that the fan-shaped leaves in its crown brushed his
face.

At last he gained the tents and pinfolds of his people, not a few of
which had also been overthrown, and asked the first acquaintances he met
for Nun, the father of his dead mother and of Joshua.

He had gone down to the shore with Moses and other elders of the people.
Ephraim followed him there, and the damp, salt sea-air refreshed him and
cooled his brow.

Yet he could not instantly get speech with him, so he collected his
thoughts, and recovered his breath, while watching the men whom he sought
talking eagerly with some gaily-clad Phoenician sailors. A youth like
Ephraim might not venture to interrupt the grey-haired heads of the
people in the discussion, which evidently r