ion of the first Temple, back to the march from Egypt,
we have absolute assurance that you are lineally sprung from Hur,
the associate of Joshua. In the matter of descent sanctified by
time, is not the honor perfect? Do you care to pursue further?
if so, take the Torah, and search the Book of Numbers, and of
the seventy-two generations after Adam, you can find the very
progenitor of your house."

There was silence for a time in the chamber on the roof.

"I thank you, O my mother," Judah next said, clasping both her
hands in his; "I thank you with all my heart. I was right in not
having the good rector called in; he could not have satisfied me
more than you have. Yet to make a family truly noble, is time
alone sufficient?"

"Ah, you forget, you forget; our claim rests not merely upon time;
the Lord's preference is our especial glory."

"You are speaking of the race, and I, mother, of the family--our
family. In the years since Father Abraham, what have they achieved?
What have they done? What great things to lift them above the level
of their fellows?"

She hesitated, thinking she might all this time have mistaken his
object. The information he sought might have been for more than
satisfaction of wounded vanity. Youth is but the painted shell
within which, continually growing, lives that wondrous thing the
spirit of man, biding its moment of apparition, earlier in some
than in others. She trembled under a perception that this might be
the supreme moment come to him; that as children at birth reach out
their untried hands grasping for shadows, and crying the while, so his
spirit might, in temporary blindness, be struggling to take hold of
its impalpable future. They to whom a boy comes asking, Who am I,
and what am I to be? have need of ever so much care. Each word in
answer may prove to the after-life what each finger-touch of the
artist is to the clay he is modelling.

"I have a feeling, O my Judah," she said, patting his cheek with
the hand he had been caressing--"I have the feeling that all I
have said has been in strife with an antagonist more real than
imaginary. If Messala is the enemy, do not leave me to fight him
in the dark. Tell me all he said."

CHAPTER V

The young Israelite proceeded then, and rehearsed his conversation
with Messala, dwelling with particularity upon the latter's speeches
in contempt of the Jews, their customs, and much pent round of life.

Afraid to speak the while, the m