eptance might spare the people great suffering. But
scarcely had he concluded his clear and convincing speech, when old
Nun, Hosea's father, who had with difficulty held his feelings in check,
broke in.

The old man's face, usually so cheerful, glowed with wrath, and its
fiery hue formed a strange contrast to the thick white locks which
framed it. A few hours before he had heard Moses repel similar
propositions with harsh decision and crushing reasons; now he had heard
them again brought forward and noted many a gesture of assent among the
listeners, and saw the whole great enterprise imperilled, the enterprise
for whose success he had himself risked and sacrificed more than any
other man.

This was too much for the active old man who, with flashing eyes and
hand upraised in menace, burst forth "What do you mean? Are we to pick
up the ends of the rope the Lord our God has severed? Do you counsel us
to fasten it anew, with a looser knot, which will hold as long as the
whim of a vacillating weakling who has broken his promises to us and to
Moses a score of times? Do you wish to lead us back to the cage whence
the Almighty released us by a miracle? Are we to treat the Lord our God
like a bad debtor and prefer the spurious gold ring we are offered to
the royal treasures He promises? Oh, messenger from the Egyptians--I
would...."

Here the hot-blooded grey-beard raised his clenched fist in menace but,
ere he had uttered the threat that hovered on his lips, he let his arm
fall; for Gabriel, the oldest member of the tribe of Zebulun, shouted:

"Remember your own son, who is to-day among the foes of his people."

The words struck home; yet they only dimmed the fiery old man's glad
self-reliance a moment and, amid the voices uttering disapproval of the
malicious Gabriel and the few who upheld the Zebulunite, he cried:

"And because I am perhaps in danger of losing, not only the ten thousand
acres of land I flung behind me, but a noble son, it is my right to
speak here."

His broad chest heaved with his labored breathing and his eyes, shadowed
by thick white brows, rested with a milder expression on the son of Hur,
whose face had paled at his vehement words, as he continued:

"Uri is a good and dutiful son to his father and has also been obliged
to make great sacrifices in leaving the place where his work was so much
praised and his own house in Memphis. The blessing of the Most High will
not fail him. But for the very r