ho was bearing a
harp.

"Who is this maiden?" asked the prince. "But wait I have seen that look
somewhere. Ah! when I was here the last time a frightened girl looked
from the bushes at me.'"

"This is Esther, my relative and servant," answered Sarah. "She has
lived with me a mouth now, but she fears thee, lord, so she runs away
always. Perhaps she looked at thee sometime from out the bushes."

"Thou mayst go, my child," said the prince to the maiden, who seemed
petrified, and when she had hidden behind the bushes, he asked,

"Is she a Jewess too? And this guard of thy house, who looks at me as a
sheep at a crocodile?"

"That is Samuel the son of Esdras; he also is a relative. I took him in
place of the black man to whom Thou hast given freedom. But hast Thou
not permitted me to choose my servants?"

"That is true. And so also the overseer of the workmen is a Jew, for he
has a yellow complexion and looks with a lowliness which no Egyptian
could imitate."

"That," answered Sarah, "is Ezechiel, the son of Reuben, a relative of
my father. Does he not please thee, my lord? These are all thy very
faithful servants."

"Does he please me," said the prince, dissatisfied, drumming with his
fingers on the bench. "He is not here to please me, but to guard thy
property. For that matter, these people do not concern me. Sing,
Sarah."

Sarah knelt on the grass at the prince's feet, and playing a few notes
as accompaniment, began,

"Where is he who has no care? Who is he who in lying down to slumber
has the right to say: This is a day that I have spent without sorrow?
Where is the man who lying down for the grave, can say: My life has
passed without pain, without fear, like a calm evening on the Jordan.

"But how many are there who moisten their bread with tears daily, and
whose houses are filled with sighing.

"A wail is man's earliest speech on this earth, and a groan his
farewell to it. Full of suffering does he come into life, full of
sorrow does he go to his resting-place, and no one asks him where he
would like to be.

"Where is that offspring of man who has not tasted the bitterness of
being? Is it the child which death has snatched from its mother, or is
it the babe whose mother's breast was drained by hunger ere the little
one could place lips to it?

"Where is the man who is sure of his fate, the man who can look with
unfailing eye at the morrow? Does he who toils on the field know that
rain is not under hi