These words did not fail to produce their effect.  The furious women looked at the heavy broad gold armlet, then at the handsome youth, and the men of Judah and Ephraim who had gathered around him, and finally glanced enquiringly into one another’s faces.  At last the wife of a foreign trader cried: 

“Let him give us the gold, and we’ll leave the handsome young chief his bleeding sweetheart.”

To this decision the others agreed, and though the brickmaker’s infuriated wife, who thought as the avenger of her child she had done an act pleasing in the sight of God, and was upbraided for it as a murderess, reviled the youth with frantic gestures, she was dragged away by the crowd to the shore where they hoped to find more booty.

During this threatening transaction, Miriam had fearlessly examined Kasana’s wound and bound it up with skilful hands, The dagger which Prince Siptah had jestingly given the beautiful lady of his love, that she might not go to war defenceless, had inflicted a deep wound under the shoulder, and the blood had flowed so abundantly that the feeble spark of life threatened to die out at any moment.

But she still lived, and in this condition was borne to the tent of Nun, which was the nearest within reach.

The old chief had just been supplying weapons to the shepherds and youths whom Ephraim had summoned to go to the relief of the imprisoned Hosea, and had promised to join them, when the mournful procession approached.

As Kasana loved the handsome old man, the latter had for many years kept a place in his heart for Captain Homecht’s pretty daughter.

She had never met him without gladdening him by a greeting which he always returned with kind words, such as:  “The Lord bless you, child!” or:  “It is a delightful hour when an old man meets so fair a creature.”  Many years before—­she had then worn the curls of childhood—­he had even sent her a lamb, whose snowy fleece was specially silky, after having bartered the corn from her father’s lands for cattle of his most famous breed—­and what his son had told him of Kasana had been well fitted to increase his regard for her.

He beheld in the archer’s daughter the most charming young girl in Tanis and, had she been the child of Hebrew parents, he would have rejoiced to wed her to his son.

To find his darling in such a state caused the old man grief so profound that bright tears ran down upon his snowy beard and his voice trembled as, while greeting her, he saw the blood-stained bandage on her shoulder.

After she had been laid on his couch, and Nun had placed his own chest of medicines at the disposal of the skilful prophetess, Miriam asked the men to leave her alone with the suffering Egyptian, and when she again called them into the tent she had revived the strength of the severely-wounded girl with cordials, and bandaged the hurt more carefully than had been possible before.