oisters, was deep silence, such as in tropic
lands precedes the bursting of a cyclone. To Miriam who watched, it
seemed as though in the midst of this unnatural quiet Jehovah was
withdrawing Himself from the house where His Spirit dwelt and from the
people who worshipped Him with their lips, but rejected Him in their
hearts. Her tormented nerves shuddered with a fear that was not of the
body, as she stared upwards at the immense arch of the azure evening
sky, half expecting that her mortal eyes would catch some vision of
the departing wings of the Angel of the Lord. But there she could see
nothing except the shapes of hundreds of high-poised eagles. "Where the
carcase is there shall the eagles be gathered together," she muttered to
herself, and remembering that these four birds were come to feast upon
the bones of the whole people of the Jews and upon her own, she shut her
eyes and groaned.

Then the light died on the Temple towers and faded from the pale slopes
of the mountains, and in place of the wheeling carrion birds bright
stars shone out one by one upon the black mantle of the night.

Once again, setting her teeth because of the agony that the touch of the
marble gave to her raw and swollen flesh, Miriam began to fret the cords
which bound her wrists against the rough edge of the angle-iron. She was
sure that it was nearly worn through, but oh! how could she endure the
agony until it parted? Still she did endure, for at her feet lay the
bottle, and burning thirst drove her to the deed. Suddenly her reward
came, and she felt that her arms were free; yes, numbed, swollen and
bleeding, they fell against her sides, wrenching the stiffened muscles
of her shoulders back to their place in such a fashion that she
well-nigh fainted with the pain. Still they were free, and presently she
was able to lift them, and with the help of her teeth to loose the ends
of the cord, so that the blood could run once more through her blackened
wrists and hands. Again she waited till some feeling had come back into
her fingers, which were numb and like to mortify. Then she knelt down,
and drawing the leather bottle to her, held it between her palms, while,
with her teeth, she undid its thong. The task was hard, for it was well
tied, but at length the knots gave, and Miriam drank. So fearful was
her thirst that she could have emptied the bottle at a draught, but this
she, who had lived in the desert, was too wise to do, for she knew that