"Is not your sister with you? Then how came you hither, child?" replied the old man, in that quick terror to which the events of recent days had made him susceptible.
"I brought him here, sir. I, Dion."
"Met you not my daughter? You sent for her? No? I understand it not. One came bringing as a token a bit of the lad's clothing, and pledged to take her where the lost might be found. I thought the messenger had come from you. Ere I could detain her, Deborah was gone. Was it not you that sent? May I believe a Greek? Trifle not, I beseech you, with one whose life-thread can endure but little more. My daughter! O give me my daughter! If harm has come to her through thee, the curse of the Lord rot thy bones! O my child! My child!"
"It is the trick of the soldiers. They thought to get Deborah too," cried Caleb.
"Alas," said Dion, "that you were not blind, and could see to take me to the place where they kept you before the General sent for you."
"That I can do," said the boy. "I saw all the way."
"Saw?"
"Aye, with my feet and with my nostrils and with my ears, I saw everything. Outside the walls we went down, down, down; it must have been to cross the Kedron. Then we went up, up, up, fully halfway the ascent toward Bethany. We went close to a cactus hedge, for I felt on my cheeks the cool air the cactus breathes. Then over a broken wall, for I fell among the stones. Next a house, high and of smooth mortar walls, for I can tell such things by the echo one's footfall makes. The tent we stopped at was near where horses, as many as threescore, were tethered; this I knew from their neighing. It is an old camp, for the odor of the dung was old."
"I have the spot," said Dion. "It is the camp of Cleanthes. Let me away! But Glaucon, your Benjamin, does well?" bending a moment over the sleeping form.
"So said the surgeon you brought," replied Elkiah. "But haste! O God of Abraham, take my son if Thou wilt, but spare, oh, spare, my Deborah! God be merciful! Thy billows are gone over me. Spare me that I may see again the face of my child, and gather strength before I go hence, and be no more!"