Then, the meal being over, Mordecai, with the same shamefaced bashfulness he had shown when speaking of the Sidurim, turned the pages of the book, saying almost wistfully: "I know that tonight is not a festival or Sabbath with us, gentlemen, but if you would care to go over the psalm with me——"
"We've been waiting a long time for this and we'll give good measure," laughed little Barrett, but his eyes did not jest as Mordecai in the quaint old sing-song of the synagogue began "When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion" and Lyon gravely followed.
"And now," Mordecai's face fairly glowed with pleasure, "now we will have the special grace, since there are three of us at the table."
"Let us say grace," he began, with hardly a look at the Hebrew.
"Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forever," responded his guests.
"With the permission of those present," went on the host, "we will bless Him of whose bounty we have partaken."
"Blessed be He of whose bounty we have partaken," answered the others, "and through whose goodness we live."
As Mordecai repeated the Hebrew phrases, learned in his almost forgotten Cheder (Hebrew School) days, a great longing came upon him and the tears coursed down his cheeks. To return again to this home, to keep the customs of his people and to die at last with Jewish friends about him and the Hebrew's declaration of faith upon his lips! But, as he closed the book, his eyes glanced about the little room and they grew dark with pain. The gun standing in the corner, the furs drying upon the wall, Becky crouching upon the blankets—all spoke to him of a life he had lived too long to exchange for the quiet existence of which he sometimes dreamed. He rose, and, with an abrupt gesture, pointed to a shaggy robe before the fire place.
"I have no better bed to offer you," he said, "but I know you are not used to a soft couch. You must be tired from your journey. Becky will tend to your horses so you had better sleep now, that tomorrow we may start out early and visit Colonel Hawkins. He would see you before you begin work on the cotton gin."
The cotton gin, the first to be built in Alabama, was completed in due time, and Barrett and Lyons, their pack horses again loaded with their tools, were ready to return to Georgia. If Mordecai felt any pain at having his co-religionists depart, he was skilful in concealing it. For, after his confidence over the supper table, he had slipped back into his stoical reserve and not even the taciturn Lyon was more silent or chary of speech in anything that did not directly concern the business in hand. So it was merry little Barrett who alone mentioned the occasion that for a moment had brought the strangers of the wilderness together and had made them brothers.