What cared she for the packing of perishable wares and providing for bodily needs, when affairs which occupied her whole soul were under discussion!  Elisheba, Naashon’s wife, any housekeeper and faithful slave could attend to the former wants.  Higher things were to be determined here—­the weal or woe of her people.

Several men of distinction in the tribes had joined the elders under the sycamore; but Hur had already departed with Moses.

Uri, the son of the former, now appeared beneath the ancient tree.  The worker in metals, who had just come from Egypt, had talked in Memphis with persons who were near to the king and learned that Pharaoh was ready to remove great burdens from the Hebrews and grant them new favors, if Moses would render the God whom he served propitious to him and induce the people to return after they had offered sacrifices in the wilderness.  Therefore it would be advisable to send envoys to Tanis and enter into negotiations with the Sublime Porte.

These proposals, which Uri had not yet ventured to moot to his father, he, with good intentions, brought before the assembled elders; he hoped that their acceptance might spare the people great suffering.  But scarcely had he concluded his clear and convincing speech, when old Nun, Hosea’s father, who had with difficulty held his feelings in check, broke in.

The old man’s face, usually so cheerful, glowed with wrath, and its fiery hue formed a strange contrast to the thick white locks which framed it.  A few hours before he had heard Moses repel similar propositions with harsh decision and crushing reasons; now he had heard them again brought. forward and noted many a gesture of assent among the listeners, and saw the whole great enterprise imperilled, the enterprise for whose success he had himself risked and sacrificed more than any other man.

This was too much for the active old man who, with flashing eyes and hand upraised in menace, burst forth “What do you mean?  Are we to pick up the ends of the rope the Lord our God has severed?  Do you counsel us to fasten it anew, with a looser knot, which will hold as long as the whim of a vacillating weakling who has broken his promises to us and to Moses a score of times?  Do you wish to lead us back to the cage whence the Almighty released us by a miracle?  Are we to treat the Lord our God like a bad debtor and prefer the spurious gold ring we are offered to the royal treasures He promises?  Oh, messenger from the Egyptians—­ I would . . . .”

Here the hot-blooded grey-beard raised his clenched fist in menace but, ere he had uttered the threat that hovered on his lips, he let his arm fall; for Gabriel, the oldest member of the tribe of Zebulun, shouted: 

“Remember your own son, who is to-day among the foes of his people.”

The words struck home; yet they only dimmed the fiery old man’s glad self-reliance a moment and, amid the voices uttering disapproval of the malicious Gabriel and the few who upheld the Zebulunite, he cried: