went on, both submitted like all the rest--even
Phineas who crept into a pigeon-house with his wife and five children,
and crooked grave-haunting Kusaja. Do you remember her? Adonai! She had
seen father, mother, husband, and three noble sons, all that the Lord had
given her to love, borne to the tomb. They lay side by side in our
burying ground, and every morning and evening she went there and, sitting
on a log of wood which she had rolled close to the gravestones, moved her
lips constantly, not in prayer--no, I have listened often when she did
not know I was near--no; she talked to the dead, as though they could
hear her in the sepulchre, and understand her words like those who walk
alive beneath the sun. She is near seventy, and for thrice seven years
she has gone by the name of grave-haunting Kusaja. It was in sooth a
foolish thing to do; yet perhaps that was why she found it all the harder
to give it up, and go she would not, but hid herself among the bushes.
When Ahieser, the overseer, dragged her out, her wailing made one's heart
sore, yet when the time for departure came, the longing to go seized upon
her also, and she found it as hard to resist as the others."

"What had happened to the poor creatures, what possessed them?" asked
Hosea, interrupting the old wife's speech; for in imagination he again
beheld the people he must lead, if he valued his father's blessing as the
most priceless boon the world could offer, and beheld them in all their
wretchedness.

The startled dame, fearing that she had offended her master's first-born
son, the great and powerful chieftain, stammered:

"What possessed them, my lord? Ah, well--I am but a poor lowly
slave-woman; yet, my lord, had you but seen it. . . . "

"Well, even then?" interrupted the warrior in harsh, impatient tones, for
this was the first time he had ever found himself compelled to act
against his desires and belief.

Eliab tried to come to the assistance of the terrified woman, saying
timidly

"Ah, my lord, no tongue can relate, no human mind can picture it. It came
from the Almighty and, if I could describe how great was its influence on
the souls of the people. . . . "

"Try," Hosea broke in, "but my time is brief. So they were compelled to
depart, and set forth reluctantly on their wanderings. Even the Egyptians
have long known that they obeyed the bidding of Moses and Aaron as the
sheep follow the shepherd. Have those who brought the terrible pestilen