oot, if you will leave the wife of Hur to
care for this dying girl!"

With these words he bent over Kasana, took off the clasps and rings
she still wore, and gave them to the greedy hands outstretched to
seize them. Lastly he stripped the broad gold circlet from his arm, and
holding it aloft exclaimed:

"Here is the promised payment. If you will depart quietly and leave this
woman to Miriam, I will give you the gold, and you can divide it among
you. If you thirst for more blood, come on; but I will keep the armlet."

These words did not fail to produce their effect. The furious women
looked at the heavy broad gold armlet, then at the handsome youth, and
the men of Judah and Ephraim who had gathered around him, and finally
glanced enquiringly into one another's faces. At last the wife of a
foreign trader cried:

"Let him give us the gold, and we'll leave the handsome young chief his
bleeding sweetheart."

To this decision the others agreed, and though the brickmaker's
infuriated wife, who thought as the avenger of her child she had done
an act pleasing in the sight of God, and was upbraided for it as a
murderess, reviled the youth with frantic gestures, she was dragged away
by the crowd to the shore where they hoped to find more booty.

During this threatening transaction, Miriam had fearlessly examined
Kasana's wound and bound it up with skilful hands, The dagger which
Prince Siptah had jestingly given the beautiful lady of his love, that
she might not go to war defenceless, had inflicted a deep wound under
the shoulder, and the blood had flowed so abundantly that the feeble
spark of life threatened to die out at any moment.

But she still lived, and in this condition was borne to the tent of Nun,
which was the nearest within reach.

The old chief had just been supplying weapons to the shepherds and
youths whom Ephraim had summoned to go to the relief of the imprisoned
Hosea, and had promised to join them, when the mournful procession
approached.

As Kasana loved the handsome old man, the latter had for many years kept
a place in his heart for Captain Homecht's pretty daughter.

She had never met him without gladdening him by a greeting which he
always returned with kind words, such as: "The Lord bless you, child!"
or: "It is a delightful hour when an old man meets so fair a creature."
Many years before--she had then worn the curls of childhood--he had even
sent her a lamb, whose snowy fleece was specially s