ss, we set out, that we might not delay Assir too
long, and while passing through the streets, which resounded with the
wailing of the citizens, we softly sang the hymn of the sons of Korah,
and great joy and peace filled our hearts, for we knew that the Lord our
God would defend and guide His people."

The old man paused, but his wife and Hogla, who had listened with
sparkling eyes, leaned one on the other and, without any prompting,
began the hymn of praise of the sons of Korah, the old woman's faint
voice mingling with touching fervor with the tones of the girl, whose
harsh notes thrilled with the loftiest enthusiasm.

Hosea felt that it would be criminal to interrupt the outpouring of
these earnest hearts, but Eliab soon stopped them and gazed with evident
anxiety into the stern face of his lord's first-born son.

Had Hosea understood him?

Did this warrior, who served under Pharaoh's banner, realize how
entirely the Lord God Himself had ruled the souls of his people at their
departure.

Had the life among the Egyptians so estranged him from his people and
his God, rendered him so degenerate, that he would bid defiance to the
wishes and commands of his own father?

Was the man on whom the Hebrews' highest hopes were fixed a renegade,
forever lost to his people?

He received no verbal answer to these mute questions, but when Hosea
grasped his callous right hand in both his own and pressed it as he
would have clasped a friend's, when he bade him farewell with tearful
eyes, murmuring: "You shall hear from me!" he felt that he knew enough
and, overwhelmed with passionate delight, he pressed kiss after kiss
upon the warrior's arms and clothing.

CHAPTER VII.

Hosea returned to the camp with drooping head. The conflict in his soul
was at an end. He now knew what duty required. He must obey his father's
summons.

And the God of his race!

The old man's tale had given new life to the memories of his childhood,
and he now knew that He was not the same God as the Seth of the Asiatics
in Lower Egypt, nor the "One" and the "Sum of All" of the adepts.

The prayers he had uttered ere he fell asleep, the history of the
creation of the world, which he could never hear sufficiently often,
because it showed so clearly the gradual development of everything on
earth and in heaven until man came to possess and enjoy all, the story
of Abraham and Isaac, of Jacob, Esau, and his own ancestor, Joseph--how
gladly he had