"It is not for long," urged Sadoc. "I beseech you be patient for a little space. The time may come when you shall return to Assyria with the good wishes of a whole nation to speed you on the way."
"It cannot come too soon," answered the other, whose heart was with Ishtar, and whose only hope of recovering some traces of her lay in a speedy return to his own country. "I owe you my life, indeed; and but for you, should have been bleaching in the desert, stripped to the bones by jackal and bird of prey; yet what is life without honour, without liberty, without love?"
"Without faith rather," said Sadoc, grave, sorrowful, and dignified. "The only possession the greedy Egyptian cannot ravish, the only jewel Pharaoh's arm is not long enough to seize—too lofty for his reach, too pure for his diadem, too precious for his throne. My son, there is a something even in the weeping captive's breast that may be greater, nobler, more enduring than the glory of warriors and the pride of kings."
"There are but two motives," answered Sarchedon, "to stir a brave man's heart: the hope of warlike fame, the desire of woman's love."
Sadoc smiled sadly.
"And when the warrior is down in battle," he replied, "or pining in the dungeon—when the woman turns false and cold, or her fair face is fixed in death—what is left then to him whose arm has striven but for his own vain glory, whose worship has turned from the God of his fathers to a creature weaker and lower than himself?"
"A man can always die," answered the Assyrian, "when there is nothing left to live for, as he falls asleep when the sun has gone down into the wilderness. How shall you compel him who has no fear of death?"
"Death!" repeated Sadoc. "And is it, then, so much more dreadful to die than to live? Is rest more terrible than labour, fulness than want, peace than strife? Which is nobler, the courage of resistance or of attack? Which best fulfils the purpose of creation?—the ox, plodding obedient to the goad, or the wild ass, spurning control beneath her hoof? I will show you to-morrow a whole people displaying such calm and patient fortitude as shames the proudest triumphs of Assyria, with her line of kings from Nimrod the Great down to that fierce old warrior whose chariots rolled here, as it seems, but yesterday over a heap of slain, and whose name to-day bids the false Egyptian tremble and turn pale. My son, the hour may yet come when Pharaoh shall be humbled to the dust, and we shall live like brethren with our kindred once more in the land of Shinar—the land of our fathers, the land of our inheritance, and of our hope. In the meantime, though the night has seemed long and weary, morning may be close at hand."
With these words, he spread a couch for his guest, and betook himself to slumber. Sarchedon, looking round the hut, remembered it was of such a shelter he had dreamed, sleeping beneath the tower of Belus, in the temple of the Assyrian god.
It was to hard reality, though, that he woke under the gray morning sky. Company by company, as his host had warned him, family by family, and man by man, the Israelites were summoned to their tasks. As he marched to the scene of labour, between two sons of Sadoc, one a tender stripling, the other a stalwart broad-shouldered youth, shame crimsoned the cheek of the practised warrior, thus to find himself identified with a nation of slaves.