Joshua knew to whom he and Ephraim owed this favor, and received it with grateful joy.

Walking had been made easier for him, but his mind was more and more sorely oppressed with anxious cares.

The army passing yonder would have been enough to destroy down to the last man a force ten times greater than the number of his people.  His people, and with them his father and Miriam,—­who had caused him such keen suffering, yet to whom he was indebted for having found the way which, even in prison, he had recognized as the only right one—­seemed to him marked out for a bloody doom; for, however powerful might be the God whose greatness the prophetess had praised in such glowing words, and to whom he himself had learned to look up with devout admiration,—­untrained and unarmed bands of shepherds must surely and hopelessly succumb to the assault of this army.  This certainty, strengthened by each advancing division, pierced his very soul.  Never before had he felt such burning anguish, which was terribly sharpened when he beheld the familiar faces of his own troops, which he had so lately commanded, pass before him under the leadership of another.  This time they were taking the field to hew down men of his own blood.  This was pain indeed, and Ephraim’s conduct gave him cause for fresh anxiety; since Kasana’s appearance and interference in behalf of him and his companions in suffering, the youth had again lapsed into silence and gazed with wandering eyes at the army or into vacancy.

Now he, too, was freed from the chain, and Joshua asked in a whisper if he did not long to return to his people to help them resist so powerful a force, but Ephraim merely answered: 

“When confronted with those hosts, they can do nothing but yield.  What did we lack before the exodus?  You were a Hebrew, and yet became a mighty chief among the Egyptians ere you obeyed Miriam’s summons.  In your place, I would have pursued a different course.”

“What would you have done?” asked Joshua sternly.

“What?” replied the youth, the fire of his young soul blazing.  “What?  Only this, I would have remained where there is honor and fame and everything beautiful.  You might have been the greatest of the great, the happiest of the happy—­this I have learned, but you made a different choice.”

“Because duty commanded it,” Joshua answered gravely, “because I will no longer serve any one save the people among whom I was born.”

“The people?” exclaimed Ephraim, contemptuously.  “I know them, and you met them at Succoth.  The poor are miserable wretches who cringe under the lash; the rich value their cattle above all else and, if they are the heads of the tribes, quarrel with one another.  No one knows aught of what pleases the eye and the heart.  They call me one of the richest of the race and yet I shudder when I think of the house I inherited, one of the best and largest.  One who has seen more beautiful ones ceases to long for such an abode.”