xious. So he sent word to
the prison that the brothers might all go home but Simeon, who must
stay in prison until the rest came back with their young brother.

He also gave orders that they were to have their corn-sacks filled, and
that each man's money was to be secretly tied up again in the mouth of
his sack.

All the brothers were glad but Simeon, who begged them to come back as
quickly as they could; and riding on their high camels, with their
well-laden asses tied to each other in a long line, they left the
Egyptian city, thankful to get away, and went back to their old father
in Hebron.

Jacob was glad to see them again, but he would not believe their story
about Simeon being left behind; and he refused to let them have
Benjamin, for he said that Joseph was once taken and never came back,
and that the same fate would befall the other son of his old age.

When they said that the Egyptian ruler had ordered them to bring their
young brother down, their old father only asked, with flashing eyes,
why they told the Egyptian that they had another brother. They replied
quite truly that he asked them the question. Jacob did not believe
them, and this made him all the more determined not to trust Benjamin
with them.

But the corn which they had brought was soon finished, and the old man
urged his sons to go back to Egypt for more. They refused to do so
unless they could take Benjamin with them; and after holding out for a
long time, at last their father yielded. He bade them make up a little
present of honey and dates and simple country things for the terrible
Egyptian, hoping that the great man would not be unkind to his youngest
son. Then with hands upraised he asked God's blessing upon his sons,
and with a sorrowful heart saw them ride away.

Mounted on strong camels, and followed by a string of asses with the
empty corn-sacks on their backs, the ten brothers left the Vale of
Hebron, and rode slowly across the hot desert to one of the gates of
the great Egyptian wall. Again they came to the island, and were
ferried over to the city as before.

The camels knelt in the wide marketplace, where Joseph had been sold as
a slave twenty years before, to wait while one of the brothers went to
tell the doorkeeper of Joseph's house that the ten shepherds of Canaan
had returned with their youngest brother. After waiting for a time
they were told that the king's officer would see them.

Joseph was glad when he hear