Neither harp, nor lute, nor tabret, nor cymbal could have produced these sounds. It was as if the rocks themselves had become mighty timbrels, and were stricken by some spirit of the woods. Surely this must be of superhuman agency: the noise was so unearthly, and the notes so clearly belonged to the words they suggested. It was not a voice; yet surely it was the Bath-kol, the Echo, the Daughter of the Voice, of which the now sainted Mattathias had spoken.
She prostrated herself among the gnarled roots of a great terebinth that projected from the side of the ravine as if they were the horns of an altar. So, too, her soul clung to her Lord. She prayed in words that His will might be her will. Perhaps in thought she prayed that her will might be His will—a distinction she was too unskilled in moral anatomy to note.
Again and again with ecstatic fervor she murmured her oft-repeated vow, "Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God!" She lay some moments in almost a trance of seraphic peace. This was changed to seraphic fury. Jehovah had accepted her. She was to be His messenger—a messenger of fire, of dagger, of deceit toward Israel's foes, as well as of consolation to His people.
She rose, and stood with hands clasped behind her, her face upturned to the glowing line of light that spanned the ravine. She drank in the brightness as heaven's approbation.
How long she remained in that attitude of rhapsody she did not know. The spell was suddenly broken.
"There she is! Here, Caleb, is Deborah! Give me your hand, or she will be gone ere we reach her," cried Mephibosheth to his blind friend, as, spying Deborah at a distance, the children tried to reach her. But thus startled, she walked too fast for the lame boy, encumbered as he was with the care of his comrade.
"Well, let her go. It is enough that she is safe," said Caleb.
The boys had spent an hour in a favorite haunt in a field of great boulders that lay just at the brink of the ravine. These stones were of volcanic origin, and a proportion of metal had entered into their composition. The lads soon found that when they were struck with smaller stones they emitted semi-musical sounds, and they were not long in playing upon them crude imitations of the tunes with which they were familiar. Caleb would sit by one that gave a deep ring, while Meph with a stone and his crutch could reach two others.
"I thought when we played 'Awake, Deborah!' we would start her," said Meph.
"So we did," replied Caleb, and reaching his hands up to his comrade's shoulders, with a spring and a boost, he was instantly astride them, a saddle that the good-natured cripple had often provided for his more unfortunate friend when the way was rough.