that we may tell our wrongs
to her."

"Let us flee!" screamed Tafet.

"Whither?" inquired Gideon.

"Never!" said Sarah, on whose mild face appeared a flush of anger. "Do
I not belong to the heir, before whose face those people all prostrate
themselves?"

And before her father and the old woman had regained their senses, she,
all in white, had run out on the roof and called to the throng beyond
the wall,

"Here I am! What do ye want of me?"

The uproar was stilled for a moment, but again threatening voices were
raised,

"Be accursed, Thou strange woman whose sin stops the Nile in its
overflow!"

A number of stones hurled at random whistled through the air; one of
them struck Sarah's forehead.

"Father!" cried she, seizing her head.

Gideon caught her in his arms and bore her from the terrace. In the
night were visible people, in white caps and skirts, who climbed over
the wall below.

Tafet screamed in a heaven-piercing voice, the black slave seized an
axe, took his place in the doorway, and declared that he would split
the head of any man daring to enter.

"Stone that Nubian dog!" cried men from the wall to the crowd of
people.

But the people became silent all at once, for from the depth of the
garden came a man with shaven head; from this man's shoulders depended
a panther skin.

"A prophet! A holy father!" murmured some in the crowd. Those sitting
on the wall began now to spring down from it.

"People of Egypt," said the priest, calmly, "with what right do ye
raise hands on the property of the erpatr?"

"The unclean Jewess dwells here, who stops the rise of the Nile. Woe to
us! misery and famine are hanging over Lower Egypt."

"People of weak mind or of evil faith," said the priest, "where have ye
heard that one woman could stop the will of the gods? Every year in the
month Thoth the Nile begins to increase and rises till the mouth peak.
Has it ever happened otherwise, though our land has been full at all
times of strangers, sometimes foreign priests and princes, who groaning
in captivity and grievous labor might utter the most dreadful curses
through sorrow and anger? They would have brought on our heads all
kinds of misfortune, and more than one of them would have given their
lives if only the sun would not rise over Egypt in the morning, or if
the Nile would not rise when the year began. And what came of their
prayers? Either they were not heard in the heavens, or foreign gods had
no pow