“But does it not trouble you to leave the child alone?”
“Nay, sister, she is not alone. Nor do I speak of [pg 167]our dear little Judith here.” And he stroked the little girl’s head, and bade her go and play outside, but be careful not to go into the sun.
“Believe me,” he went on, “that when I am not here, Miriam’s angel is with her. Perhaps you will think me mad when I say that I have seen, and that not once or twice only, the flash of white garments vanishing in the darkness as I came into the cave. And last night, as I sat here, dreaming, it may be, but certainly seeing everything in the cave as plainly as I see it this moment, the angel came with the little babe—our little David that my Hannah took with her to Paradise—to kiss his sick sister. And when Miriam awoke about an hour after dawn, the fever had left her.”
At this moment the girl opened her eyes. “Oh, father,” she cried, “did you indeed see little brother last night?—for I saw him too; but I did not see that an angel was carrying him. He seemed to be in the air somehow, with no one holding him up. And he had beautiful white clothes—not these nasty sheepskins and goatskins that we have to wear—and he stretched out his hands to me, and kissed me, and I felt that moment as if that dreadful burning had gone out of me. And oh! there was such a wonderful look upon his face. It was just like the look on dear mother’s face that evening when the sun was just setting, and you took little brother up in your arms, and said his name was David.”
Ruth could only listen to such talk with wonder and awe. But she went back to her husband and child with a lighter heart than she had borne for many days.
But a trouble was at hand which, though it had been for some time foreseen, was great enough to make private sorrows and anxieties seem inconsiderable. It was reported through the encampment that Mattathias, the father of his people, was dying.
The old man’s health had been failing for some time. The hardships of his new life had told grievously upon it, all the more that he refused the exemption from labour which his age required. He had ceased to accompany the expeditions because he found that his presence hampered the movements of younger and stronger men, but the management of the multifarious affairs of the encampment—the home administration, as it may be called, of the patriotic movement—he kept in his own hands. Early and late he busied himself in this work, and before many weeks were past his labours wore him out.
He was well aware that the end had come, and that all that remained for him to do was to appoint a successor who should accomplish, or at least carry on—for he did not deceive himself as to the difficulty of the work—the task which he had commenced. All the leaders were summoned to his [pg 169]presence, the wounded Seraiah, for whose capacity and serene courage the old chief had a high regard, being carried thither on a litter. The old man was propped in his bed on cushions, the difficulty of breathing making it impossible for him to lie down. On either side stood his five sons, John, the eldest, being at his right hand, with Eleazar and Jonathan near him, while Simon and Judas were on the left. A physician, the solitary professor of the healing art that the camp possessed, sat by the bed’s foot, with a cup of some cordial in his hand.
