“The lady Miriam,” continued Nehushta, “had a daughter Rachel, whose servant I was.”

“Was?” he interrupted, startled from his calm.  “Has she then been put to death by those fierce men and their king, as was as her husband Demas?”

“Nay, sir, but she died in childbirth, and this is the babe she bore”; and she held the sleeping little one towards him, at whom he gazed earnestly, yes, and bent down and kissed it—­since, although they saw so few of them, the Essenes loved children.

“Tell me that sad story,” he said.

“Sir, I will both tell it and prove it to be true”; and Nehushta told him all from the beginning to the end, producing to his sight the tokens which she had taken from the breast of her mistress, and repeating her last message to him word for word.  When she had finished, Ithiel turned away and mourned a while.  Then, speaking aloud, he put up a prayer to God for guidance—­for without prayer these people would not enter upon anything, however simple—­and came back to Nehushta, who stood by the oxen.

“Good and faithful woman,” he said, “who it would seem are not fickle and light-hearted, or worse, like the multitude of your sex—­perchance because your dark skin shields you from their temptations—­you have set me in a cleft stick, and there I am held fast.  Know that the rule of my order is that we should have naught to do with females, young or old; therefore how can I receive you or the child?”

“Of the rules of your order, sir, I know nothing,” answered Nehushta sharply, since the words about the colour of her skin had not pleased her; “but of the rules of nature I do know, and something of the rules of God also, for, like my mistress and this infant, I am a Christian.  These tell me, all of them, that to cast out an orphan child who is of your own blood, and whom a cruel fortune has thus brought to your door, would be an evil act, and one for which you must answer to Him who is above the rules of any order.”

“I may not wrangle, especially with a woman,” replied Ithiel, who seemed ill at ease; “but if my first words are true, this is true also, that those same rules enjoin upon us hospitality, and above all, that we must not turn away the helpless or the destitute.”

“Clearly, then, sir, least of any must you turn away this child whose blood is your blood, and those dead mother sent her to you, that she might not fall into the power of a grandfather who has dealt so cruelly with those he should have cherished, to be brought up among Zealots as a Jew and taught to make offering of living things, and be anointed with the oil and blood of sacrifice.”

“No, no, the thought is horrible,” answered Ithiel, holding up his hands.  “It is better, far better that she should be a Christian than one of that fanatic and blood-spilling faith.”  This he said, because among the Essenes the use of oil was held to be unclean.  Also above all things, they loathed the offering of life in sacrifice to God; who, although they did not acknowledge Christ—­perhaps because He was never preached to them, who would listen to no new religion—­practised the most of His doctrines with the greatest strictness.