his mind was more and more
sorely oppressed with anxious cares.

The army passing yonder would have been enough to destroy down to the
last man a force ten times greater than the number of his people. His
people, and with them his father and Miriam,--who had caused him such
keen suffering, yet to whom he was indebted for having found the way
which, even in prison, he had recognized as the only right one--seemed
to him marked out for a bloody doom; for, however powerful might be the
God whose greatness the prophetess had praised in such glowing
words, and to whom he himself had learned to look up with devout
admiration,--untrained and unarmed bands of shepherds must surely
and hopelessly succumb to the assault of this army. This certainty,
strengthened by each advancing division, pierced his very soul. Never
before had he felt such burning anguish, which was terribly sharpened
when he beheld the familiar faces of his own troops, which he had so
lately commanded, pass before him under the leadership of another. This
time they were taking the field to hew down men of his own blood. This
was pain indeed, and Ephraim's conduct gave him cause for fresh anxiety;
since Kasana's appearance and interference in behalf of him and his
companions in suffering, the youth had again lapsed into silence and
gazed with wandering eyes at the army or into vacancy.

Now he, too, was freed from the chain, and Joshua asked in a whisper if
he did not long to return to his people to help them resist so powerful
a force, but Ephraim merely answered:

"When confronted with those hosts, they can do nothing but yield. What
did we lack before the exodus? You were a Hebrew, and yet became a
mighty chief among the Egyptians ere you obeyed Miriam's summons. In
your place, I would have pursued a different course."

"What would you have done?" asked Joshua sternly.

"What?" replied the youth, the fire of his young soul blazing. "What?
Only this, I would have remained where there is honor and fame and
everything beautiful. You might have been the greatest of the great,
the happiest of the happy--this I have learned, but you made a different
choice."

"Because duty commanded it," Joshua answered gravely, "because I will no
longer serve any one save the people among whom I was born."

"The people?" exclaimed Ephraim, contemptuously. "I know them, and you
met them at Succoth. The poor are miserable wretches who cringe under
the lash; the rich value t