"Thy father fell heir to the most of his wealth, but not to his immunity. With a heart as great as his sire's he continued the good work. He wedded thy mother, the daughter of another free Israelite, and in his love for her, never was man more happy. In the midst of his hope and his peace an enemy betrayed him to Rameses, the Incomparable Pharaoh. And Rameses remembered not his father's covenant. So Maai's lands, his flocks, his home, were taken; thou, but new-born, and thy mother with her people were sent to the brick-fields—himself and his brothers to the mines; and in a few years thou wast all that was left of thy father's house."
The effect of this recital on the young Israelite was deep. Anguish, wrath, and the pain that intensifies these two, helplessness, inflamed her soul. The story was not entirely new to her; she had heard it, a part at a time, in her childhood; but now, her understanding fully developed, the whole history of her family's wrongs appealed to her in all its actual savagery. Egypt, as a unit, like a single individual, had done her people to death. Between her and Egypt, then, should be bitter enmity, rancor that might never be subdued, and eternal warfare. Her enemy had conquered her, had put her in bondage, and made sport of her as a pastime. The accumulation of injury and insult seemed more than she could bear, and the vague hope of Israel in Moses seemed in the face of Egypt's strength a folly most fatuous.
"O Egypt! Egypt!" she exclaimed with concentrated passion. "What a debt of vengeance Israel owes to thee!"
The old woman laid her shriveled hands on the arm of her ward.
"Aye, and it shall be paid," she said fiercely. "Thou canst not get thy people back, nor alleviate for them now the pangs that killed them; but to the mortally wronged there is one restitution—revenge!"
At this moment some one over near the western limits of the camp cried out a welcome; a commotion arose, noisy with cheers and rapid with running. Presently it died down and the pair before the tent saw a horseman ride through the gloom toward the empty frame house of the overseer.
The two women lapsed immediately into their absorbed communion again.
"Lay it not to Egypt alone, but to all the offenders against Jehovah. Midian and Amalek, passing through to do homage to the Pharaoh, sneer at Israel; Babylon in her chariot of gold flicks her whip at the sons of Abraham as she bears her gifts of sisterhood to Memphis. We suffer not only the insults of a single nation, but despiteful use by all idolaters. Let but the world gather before Jehovah's altar and there shall be no more affronts to Israel."
"Must we bide that time?" Rachel asked. "Or shall we bring it about?"
"Nay," Deborah replied scornfully. "Even my mystic eyes are not potent enough to see so far into the future. We throw off the bondage sooner than thou dreamest, daughter of Judah, but if the nations bow at the altar of Jehovah, it will take a stronger hand than Israel's to bring them there."