he said. "Get you to eat, and make ready to
return to the Orchard of Palms; you must help the young man in
his coming trial. Come to me in the morning. I will send a letter
to Ilderim." Then in an undertone, as if to himself, he added,
"I may attend the Circus myself."

When Malluch after the customary benediction given and received
was gone, Simonides took a deep draught of milk, and seemed
refreshed and easy of mind.

"Put the meal down, Esther," he said; "it is over."

She obeyed.

"Here now."

She resumed her place upon the arm of the chair close to him.

"God is good to me, very good," he said, fervently. "His habit is
to move in mystery, yet sometimes he permits us to think we see
and understand him. I am old, dear, and must go; but now, in this
eleventh hour, when my hope was beginning to die, he sends me this
one with a promise, and I am lifted up. I see the way to a great
part in a circumstance itself so great that it shall be as a new
birth to the whole world. And I see a reason for the gift of my
great riches, and the end for which they were designed. Verily,
my child, I take hold on life anew."

Esther nestled closer to him, as if to bring his thoughts from
their far-flying.

"The king has been born" he continued, imagining he was still speaking
to her, "and he must be near the half of common life. Balthasar says
he was a child on his mother's lap when he saw him, and gave him
presents and worship; and Ilderim holds it was twenty-seven years
ago last December when Balthasar and his companions came to his
tent asking a hiding-place from Herod. Wherefore the coming cannot
now be long delayed. To-night--to-morrow it may be. Holy fathers of
Israel, what happiness in the thought! I seem to hear the crash of
the falling of old walls and the clamor of a universal change--ay,
and for the uttermost joy of men, the earth opens to take Rome in,
and they look up and laugh and sing that she is not, while we are;"
then he laughed at himself. "Why, Esther, heard you ever the like?
Surely, I have on me the passion of a singer, the heat of blood
and the thrill of Miriam and David. In my thoughts, which should be
those of a plain worker in figures and facts, there is a confusion
of cymbals clashing and harp-strings loud beaten, and the voices
of a multitude standing around a new-risen throne. I will put the
thinking by for the present; only, dear, when the king comes he
will need money and men, for as he was a chi