stray from Him, but not utterly, as
all the other peoples of the earth. For centuries, amid the great
clamor of prayers to the hollow gods, there arose only from this
compound of slaves, here, a call to Him. Out of the reek of idolatrous
savors, drifted up now and again the straight column from the altar of
a Hebrew, sacrificing to the One God. Where, indeed, are any faithful,
save in Israel? Shall He condemn us who only have held steadfast?
Nay! He hath but permitted the oppression that we may have our fill of
the glories of Egypt and be glad to turn our backs upon her. He will
cure us of idols by showing forth their helplessness when they are
cried unto; and when Israel is in its most grievous strait and
therefore most prone to attach itself to whosoever helpeth it. He will
prove Himself at last by His power. Aye, thou hast said. Israel can
suffer little more without perishing. Therefore is redemption at hand."

Rachel had turned her eyes away from the humiliation of Israel to its
exaltation--from fact to prophecy. She was looking with awed face at
Deborah. The prophetess went on:

"Israel hath been a green tree, carried hither in seed and grown in the
wheat-fields of Mizraim. The herds and the flocks of the Pharaoh
gathered under its branches and were sheltered from the sun by day and
from the wolves by night. The early Pharaohs loved it, the later
Pharaohs used it and the last Pharaohs feared it. For it grew
exceedingly and overshadowed the wheat-fields and they said: 'It will
come between us and Ra who is our god and he will bless it instead of
the wheat. Let us cut it down and build us temples of its timber.'
But the Lord had planted the tree in seed and in its youth it grew
under the tendance of the Lord's hand. And in later years, though it
lent its shadow as a grove for the idols and temples of gods, the most
of it faced Heaven, and for that the Lord loves it still. The Pharaohs
have lopped its branches, unmolested, but lo! now that the ax strikes
at its girth, the Lord will uproot it and plant it elsewhere than in
Mizraim. But the soil will not relinquish it readily, for it hath
struck deep. There shall be a gaping wound in Mizraim where it stood
and all the land shall be rent with the violence of the parting."

The prophetess paused, or rather her voice died away as if she actually
beheld the scene she foretold, and no more words were needed to make it
plain. Rachel's hands were clasped