ry joy.
Then seeing in their eyes the deep sorrow for their past unkindness, he
added,--

"Be not grieved nor angry that you sold me into Egypt, for it was God
who sent me hither to save many lives in the years of famine. I am
lord of the king's palace and ruler of all Egypt."

Then he took his wondering brothers home with him to stay in his fine
house, where his Egyptian wife and their little children lived; and
after a time he sent them away, laden with presents, and with wagons to
bring down their children and their old father Jacob into Egypt. For
they were all to come down, he said, and live in the golden and
fruitful land of Goshen, and he would watch over them there.

THE CHILD MOSES.

I.

Jacob and his sons stayed in Egypt until the old man died. Then Joseph
carried his body back to Hebron in a great funeral procession, and
having buried him beside his wife, who had been dead for a long time,
came back again to Egypt.

The Hebrews expected to return to Canaan soon, but that was not to be.
In course of time Joseph and his brothers died, but still the Hebrews,
or Israelites, as they were also called, stayed on in Egypt, and in
time grew into a great nation. Then a new king came to the throne, who
was afraid of their numbers, and made slaves of them all, forcing them
to make bricks and build for him great walls, forts, and buildings of
all kinds.

They were taken in gangs, guarded by soldiers, to the place where the
brown river clay was thick; there they dug it out with spades, trod it
with their feet, and worked it with their hands until it was wet and
soft. Then they shaped it with little square boxes into brown bricks
for building. Other workers placed the bricks in baskets and carried
them away to the boats in the river, for the boatmen to take up to the
great cities where the walls were being built.

Some of the Israelites toiled at building these high brick walls,
storehouses, forts, and even cities for the great king; and it is not
unlikely that some of the Pyramids, which we now see standing on the
banks of the Nile, were built by these poor slaves in the days now long
gone by.

Others, again, were driven out to the fields to drag wooden ploughs up
and down like cattle, to dig with small wooden spades, and to clear the
land of stones; and when the harvest came, they cut down the crops and
threshed out the grain, and carried it off to their master's
storehouses.

Others had to stan