The Egyptian uttered an exclamation of surprise.
“Whence did you obtain such a belief as this?” he asked.
Amuba was silent.
“It must have been from Ameres himself,” the noble went on, seeing that the lad was reluctant to answer. “I knew him well, and also that he carried to an extreme the knowledge he had gained. But how came it that he should speak of such matters to you—a slave?”
“My master was good enough to make me a companion and friend to his son rather than a servant to him,” Amuba replied, “partly because he thought that I should lead him to a more active life, which he needed, for he was overstudious; partly because I had high rank in my own country, of which my father was the king. But he never spoke of this matter until after the accident of the cat. My friend Chebron was utterly cast down at the sin that he thought he had committed, and would at once have denounced himself, preferring death to living with such a burden upon his mind. Then his father, seeing that his whole life would be imbittered, and that he would probably be forced to fly from Egypt and dwell in some other land, told him the belief which he himself held. I believed this all the more readily because I had heard much the same from an Israelite maiden who served my master’s daughter.”
Again Amuba’s listener uttered an exclamation of surprise.
“I knew not,” he said, after a pause, “that there was an Israelite who still adhered to the religion of their ancestors.”
“The maiden told me that for the most part they had taken to the worship of the Egyptians, and indeed, so far as she knew, she was the last who clung to the old belief. She had been brought up by a great-grandfather who had been driven from his people and forced to dwell apart because he reproached them for having forsaken their God, and he instructed her in the faith he held, which was that there was but one God over all the earth.”
“Do you know who I am?” the noble asked abruptly.
“I know that you are one of the princes of the land, my lord, for I have seen you in a procession following closely behind the king with his sons and other princes.”