the Lord has promised you; but I opened to the people the door of a new and sure home.  Not for their sakes—­what hitherto have they been to me?—­but first of all to live there in happiness with you whom I loved, and my old father.  Yet you, whose cold heart knows naught of love, with my kiss still on your lips, disdain what I offer, from hatred of the hand to which I owe it.  Your life, your conflicts have made you masculine.  What other women would trample the highest blessings under foot?”

Miriam could bear no more and, sobbing aloud, covered her convulsed face with her hands.

At the grey light of dawn the sleepers in the camp began to stir, and men and maid servants came out of the dwellings of Amminadab and Naashon.  All whom the morning had roused were moving toward the wells and watering places, but she did not see them.

How her heart had expanded and rejoiced when her lover exclaimed that he had come to lead them to the land which the Lord had promised to his people.  Gladly had she rested on his breast to enjoy one brief moment of the greatest bliss; but how quickly had bitter disappointment expelled joy!  While the morning breeze had stirred the crown of the sycamore and Joshua had told her what Pharaoh would grant to the Hebrews, the rustling among the branches had seemed to her like the voice of God’s wrath and she fancied she again heard the angry words of hoary-headed Nun.  The latter’s reproaches had dismayed Uri like the flash of lightning, the roll of thunder, yet how did Joshua’s proposition differ from Uri’s?

The people—­she had heard it also from the lips of Moses—­were lost if, faithless to their God, they yielded to the temptations of Pharaoh.  To wed a man who came to destroy all for which she, her brothers, and his own father lived and labored, was base treachery.  Yet she loved Joshua and, instead of harshly repulsing him, she would have again nestled ah, how gladly, to the heart which she knew loved her so ardently.

But the leaves in the top of the tree continued to rustle and it seemed as if they reminded her of Aaron’s warning, so she forced herself to remain firm.

The whispering above came from God, who had chosen her for His prophetess, and when Joshua, in passionate excitement, owned that the longing for her was his principal motive for toiling for the people, who were as unknown to him as they were dear to her, her heart suddenly seemed to stop beating and, in her mortal agony, she could not help sobbing aloud.

Unheeding Joshua, or the stir in the camp, she again flung herself down with uplifted arms under the sycamore, gazing upward with dilated, tearful eyes, as if expecting a new revelation.  But the morning breeze continued to rustle in the summit of the tree, and suddenly everything seemed as bright as sunshine, not only within but around her, as always happened when she, the prophetess, was to behold a vision.  And in this light she saw a figure whose face startled her, not Joshua, but another to whom her heart did not incline.  Yet there he stood before the eyes of her soul in all his stately height, surrounded by radiance, and with a solemn gesture he laid his hand on the stones he had piled up.