ll see presently."

Esther here returned, bringing a number of rolls carefully enveloped
in dark-brown linen lettered quaintly in gold.

"Keep them, daughter, to give to me as I call for them," the father
said, in the tender voice he always used in speaking to her,
and continued his argument:

"It were long, good my master--too long, indeed--for me to repeat
to you the names of the holy men who, in the providence of God,
succeeded the prophets, only a little less favored than they--the
seers who have written and the preachers who have taught since the
Captivity; the very wise who borrowed their lights from the lamp
of Malachi, the last of his line, and whose great names Hillel
and Shammai never tired of repeating in the colleges. Will you
ask them of the kingdom? Thus, the Lord of the sheep in the Book
of Enoch--who is he? Who but the King of whom we are speaking? A
throne is set up for him; he smites the earth, and the other kings
are shaken from their thrones, and the scourges of Israel flung
into a cavern of fire flaming with pillars of fire. So also the
singer of the Psalms of Solomon--'Behold, O Lord, and raise up
to Israel their king, the son of David, at the time thou knowest,
O God, to rule Israel, thy children.... And he will bring the
peoples of the heathen under his yoke to serve him.... And he
shall be a righteous king taught of God, ... for he shall
rule all the earth by the word of his mouth forever.' And last,
though not least, hear Ezra, the second Moses, in his visions of
the night, and ask him who is the lion with human voice that says
to the eagle--which is Rome--'Thou hast loved liars, and overthrown
the cities of the industrious, and razed their walls, though they did
thee no harm. Therefore, begone, that the earth may be refreshed,
and recover itself, and hope in the justice and piety of him who
made her.' Whereat the eagle was seen no more. Surely, O my master,
the testimony of these should be enough! But the way to the fountain's
head is open. Let us go up to it at once.--Some wine, Esther, and then
the Torah."

"Dost thou believe the prophets, master?" he asked, after drinking.
"I know thou dost, for of such was the faith of all thy kindred.--Give
me, Esther, the book which bath in it the visions of Isaiah."

He took one of the rolls which she had unwrapped for him, and read,
"'The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light:
they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death,