"

"Of course I can. He was the first son of Rachel, the wife whom Jacob
really loved, and worked fourteen years to secure."

"But how could he have ten older brothers, if he was Rachel's first
son?" he demanded, a little perplexed.

"They were all the sons of her sister Leah and her handmaidens. Rachel
was barren all her life until Joseph was born," I explained.

"And Zaphnath said this morning that his mother was barren all the years
of her life that the Blue Star wandered. He also called himself revealer
of God's hidden things."

"Yes; and it struck me as peculiar at the time that he said of '_God's_'
not of '_the gods'_,'" I reflected. "Evidently he thinks there is but
one God. The whole matter is altogether peculiar."

"Here are the facts," replied the doctor. "Listen to them attentively.
We have dropped down into a civilization here upon Mars which coincides
in every important particular with that of the Ancient Egyptians on
Earth. They are great builders, erecters of monuments, raisers of grain,
polygamists, and they now have a young Hebrew ruler, corresponding in
every important respect with Joseph. We chance to have arrived during
the seventh year of plenty of Joseph's rule. Grain abounds; the soil
brings it forth 'by handfuls.' It is, 'as the sand of the sea, very
much,' and the Pharaoh, probably at the suggestion of his young ruler,
is storing it up----"

"By all the Patriarchs!" I interrupted. "They are running a wheat
corner, and I didn't know it! Go on, go on!"

"These are all very singular coincidences with a history which was
enacted many thousands of years ago on Earth. Now, how can you explain
their strange recurrence here?" he queried.

"How should I know? I haven't been lying awake! How do you explain
them?" I asked, full of interest.

"I have tossed on my pillows in there for three hours evolving a theory
for it. If it is correct, our opportunities here in Kem are simply
enormous. Now listen, and don't interrupt me. The Creator has given all
the habitable planets the same great problem of life to work out. Every
one of His worlds in its time passes through the same general history.
This runs parallel on all of them, but at a different speed on each. The
swift ones, nearest to the sun, have hurried through it, and may be
close upon the end. But this is a slow planet, whose year is almost
twice as long as the Earth's, and more than three times that of Venus.
The seasons pass sluggishly her