n the grass behind
them. Each bore on her head that moon-shaped head-dress which is
there the symbol of a Jewess; and no more graceful tiara can a woman
wear. It was wonderful that the same land should produce women
so different as were these close neighbours. The Mahomedans were
ape-like; but the Jewesses were glorious specimens of feminine
creation. They were somewhat too bold, perhaps; there was too much
daring in their eyes, as, with their naked shoulders and bosoms
nearly bare, they met the eyes of the men that were looking at them.
But there was nothing immodest in their audacity; it was defiant
rather, and scornful.

There was one among them, a girl, perhaps of eighteen, who might have
been a sculptor's model, not only for form and figure, but for the
expression of her countenance and the beautiful turn of her head and
shoulders. She was very unlike the Jewess that is ordinarily pictured
to us. She had no beaky nose, no thin face, no sharp, small, black,
bright eyes; she was fair, as Esther was fair; her forehead and face
were broad, her eyes large and open; yet she was a Jewess, plainly a
Jewess; such a Jewess as are many still to be seen--in Palestine, at
least, if not elsewhere.

When they came upon her, she was pressing the dripping water from
some large piece of linen, a sheet probably. In doing this she had
cunningly placed one end firmly under her foot upon a stone, and
then, with her hands raised high above her head, she twisted and
retwisted it till the water oozing out fell in heavy drops round her
feet. Her arms and neck were bare, as were also her feet; and it was
clear that she put forth to her work as much strength as usually
falls to the lot of a woman in any country.

She was very fair to look at, but there was about her no feminine
softness. Do not laugh, reader, unless you have already stopped to
think, and, thinking, have decided that a girl of eighteen, being a
washerwoman, must therefore be without feminine softness. I would not
myself say that it is so. But here at least there was no feminine
softness, no tenderness in the eye, no young shame at being gazed at.
She paused for a moment in her work, and gave back to them all the
look they gave her; and then, as though they were beneath her notice,
she strained once more at her task, and so dropped the linen to the
ground.

"If I knew how to set about the bargain, I would take that woman home
with me, and mould her to be my wife." Such wa