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: 

“And because I am perhaps in danger of losing, not only the ten thousand acres of land I flung behind me, but a noble son, it is my right to speak here.”

His broad chest heaved with his labored breathing and his eyes, shadowed by thick white brows, rested with a milder expression on the son of Hur, whose face had paled at his vehement words, as he continued: 

“Uri is a good and dutiful son to his father and has also been obliged to make great sacrifices in leaving the place where his work was so much praised and his own house in Memphis.  The blessing of the Most High will not fail him.  But for the very reason that he has hitherto obeyed the command, he must not now seek to destroy what we have commenced under the guidance of the Most High.  To you, Gabriel, I answer that my son probably will not tarry among our foes, but obedient to my summons, will join us, like Uri, the first-born of Hur.  What still detains him is doubtless some important matter of which Hosea will have as little cause to be ashamed as I, his father.  I know and trust him, and whoever expects aught else will sooner or later, by my son’s course of action, be proved a liar.”