lieve he will come?" Esther asked.

"Unless he has taken to the sea or the desert, and is yet following
on, he will come."

Simonides spoke with quiet confidence.

"He may write," she said.

"Not so, Esther. He would have despatched a letter when he found
he could not return, and told me so; because I have not received
such a letter, I know he can come, and will."

"I hope so," she said, very softly.

Something in the utterance attracted his attention; it might have
been the tone, it might have been the wish. The smallest bird
cannot light upon the greatest tree without sending a shock to
its most distant fibre; every mind is at times no less sensitive
to the most trifling words.

"You wish him to come, Esther?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, lifting her eyes to his.

"Why? Can you tell me?" he persisted.

"Because"--she hesitated, then began again--"because the young
man is--" The stop was full.

"Our master. Is that the word?"

"Yes."

"And you still think I should not suffer him to go away without
telling him to come, if he chooses, and take us--and all we have--all,
Esther--the goods, the shekels, the ships, the slaves, and
the mighty credit, which is a mantle of cloth of gold and finest
silver spun for me by the greatest of the angels of men--Success."

She made no answer.

"Does that move you nothing? No?" he said, with the slightest taint
of bitterness. "Well, well, I have found, Esther, the worst reality
is never unendurable when it comes out from behind the clouds through
which we at first see it darkly--never--not even the rack. I suppose
it will be so with death. And by that philosophy the slavery to which
we are going must afterwhile become sweet. It pleases me even now
to think what a favored man our master is. The fortune cost him
nothing--not an anxiety, not a drop of sweat, not so much as a
thought; it attaches to him undreamed of, and in his youth. And,
Esther, let me waste a little vanity with the reflection; he gets
what he could not go into the market and buy with all the pelf in
a sum--thee, my child, my darling; thou blossom from the tomb of
my lost Rachel!"

He drew her to him, and kissed her twice--once for herself, once for
her mother.

"Say not so,". she said, when his hand fell from her neck. "Let us
think better of him; he knows what sorrow is, and will set us free."

"Ah, thy instincts are fine, Esther; and thou knowest I lean upon
them in doubtful cases where good or