“But why, after all, does this make Eleazar so fond of money?” said Baithene.
“Oh, don’t you see? he is always heaping it up for his Rachel; that when they find her they may ransom her at any price, and give her dainties and clothes and jewels, and every good thing in the world, to make up to her for all she must have suffered.”
“Poor dear people!” said Baithene, touched to pity at last. “But what a dream and a delusion! how can they ever find her in this great wilderness of a world? or how would they know her if they did, after all these years, or she them? And, besides, what possible use could all this money be to her, or to any one in the midst of all this ruin, and wreck, and battle? The more possessions the more peril. If the Huns knew of all the treasure, they would be sure to torture Eleazar and Miriam till they gave it up, and then to kill them lest they should bargain any of it back again.”
“I know,” replied Ethne gravely, “and so does Miriam, but it would be cruel to undeceive the old man. This money-grubbing and money-heaping is his one link to life and love. It is country to him, and home, and child, and hope.”
Baithene sighed and smiled.
“Little sister,” he exclaimed tenderly, “I believe you would find an excuse for Judas and his thirty pieces of silver!”
She crossed herself.
“There is always the Blessed Lord’s excuse for every one,” she said; “they know not what they do. Perhaps even Judas did not quite.”
“Certainly this poor, mad Eleazar does not,” Baithene replied, with a kind of grim pity, “and you need not fear that I shall try to open his eyes, or to open any one’s eyes to his possessing the treasure.”
“It is hidden away very safely, Miriam says; not even she knows where. Most of it probably in Rome, or some safe place, away from the Huns, where we are going.”