Now he, too, was freed from the chain, and Joshua asked in a whisper if he did not long to return to his people to help them resist so powerful a force, but Ephraim merely answered: 

“When confronted with those hosts, they can do nothing but yield.  What did we lack before the exodus?  You were a Hebrew, and yet became a mighty chief among the Egyptians ere you obeyed Miriam’s summons.  In your place, I would have pursued a different course.”

“What would you have done?” asked Joshua sternly.

“What?” replied the youth, the fire of his young soul blazing.  “What?  Only this, I would have remained where there is honor and fame and everything beautiful.  You might have been the greatest of the great, the happiest of the happy—­this I have learned, but you made a different choice.”

“Because duty commanded it,” Joshua answered gravely, “because I will no longer serve any one save the people among whom I was born.”

“The people?” exclaimed Ephraim, contemptuously.  “I know them, and you met them at Succoth.  The poor are miserable wretches who cringe under the lash; the rich value their cattle above all else and, if they are the heads of the tribes, quarrel with one another.  No one knows aught of what pleases the eye and the heart.  They call me one of the richest of the race and yet I shudder when I think of the house I inherited, one of the best and largest.  One who has seen more beautiful ones ceases to long for such an abode.”

The vein on Joshua’s brow swelled, and he wrathfully rebuked the youth for denying his own blood, and being a traitor to his people.

The guard commanded silence, for Joshua had raised his reproving voice louder, and this order seemed welcome to the defiant youth.  When, during their march, his uncle looked sternly into his face or asked whether he had thought of his words, he turned angrily away, and remained mute and sullen until the first star had risen, the night camp had been made under the open sky, and the scanty prison rations had been served.

Joshua dug with his hands a resting place in the sand, and with care and skill helped the youth to prepare a similar one.

Ephraim silently accepted this help; but as they lay side by side, and the uncle began to speak to his nephew of the God of his people on whose aid they must rely, if they were not to fall victims to despair in the mines, the youth interrupted him, exclaiming in low tones, but with fierce resolution: 

“They will not take me to the mines alive!  I would rather die, while making my escape, than pine away in such wretchedness.”

Joshua whispered words of warning, and again reminded him of his duties to his people.  But Ephraim begged to be let alone; yet soon after he touched his uncle and asked softly: 

“What are they planning with Prince Siptah?”

“I don’t know; nothing good, that is certain.”