The man started back, and stared at the lad.
"As the Lord liveth!" he exclaimed, and caught the boy to his arms. "Surely Sheol has opened its gates. But where, woman, have you found him?"
"It's Deborah, too!" cried the lad. "Are you blind, Ephraim, that you cannot see Deborah?"
The woman passed through the door, and dropped the bundle from her head upon the pavement of the court.
Old Ephraim gazed stupidly at her. Then he clutched the boy closely, as if it were necessary to re-enforce vision by feeling the living child, ere he could credit his senses.
"God be praised! It is she. My master's children, both!"
Overcome as by an apparition, the old servant staggered for a moment, then with a spasmodic burst of strength grasped the door, swung it shut, dropped the heavy cross-bar between the lintels, and stood with his whole weight against it.
"Ephraim, I am not pursued; no one will harm me here," said Deborah.
"No one dare touch you here," replied he, with a fierce look at the closed portal, as if in challenge of men and demons without. "No one will touch you here, but—but you shall not go away again."
Ephraim glanced up at the sky, which dropped its light into the open square court around which the house was built, as if he would close that way of exit also, apparently imagining that it was only by some such aerial flight that Deborah had formerly disappeared.