It was the same Miriam Eli had last seen in Israel. Out in the courtyard Isaac heard the joyful greeting and through the partly opened door his eyes encountered Adah’s, looking past the young people. She beckoned him to her side for a whispered word.
“I fear the little maid will no longer be our little maid.”
The words were spoken in so low a tone he scarcely caught them, but they might have been shouted and Miriam and her visitors would not have heard. Isaac watched for a moment the little group so absorbed each in the other and sighed.
“Yea,” he admitted, sadly, “we have lost our little maid and thou and I will sorrow most.”
CHAPTER XXIII
ISRAEL
Once more it was spring. Once more were the rains over and the air balmy and the water courses quiet so that sheep might pass them and not be afraid. Once more were faint paths made across the sands of the wilderness and the stony hillsides by caravans large and small, abroad on errands of business or pleasure, and once more did the House of Naaman pass a restless night, for on the morrow Miriam was to depart for her beloved Land of Israel.
Roused from happy dreams, she could not understand for a moment the medley of confused but pleasurable sensations which surged over her; then she remembered clearly. Eli had come long months ago to take her back to things as they used to be, back to her mother and father—nay, with a rush of tears, not her father. Never again would she see that fond expression in his eyes, never again hear his kind voice, never again look upon his dear face. And her mother, old and broken, she was told. She could not realize it. Yet soon would she clasp that mother in her arms; soon see her and know for herself. To-morrow Isaac’s band would give the captives in Syria safe conduct, Rachel and the babe riding in the chariot beside her, and Benjamin leading his sheep before them. And all through this time of waiting Eli had been here: Eli, who had suffered with and for her, who had toiled and sacrificed and then found it had been in vain. Oh, Eli was so wonderful!
In another part of the House of Naaman he of whom she thought was also awake, a little smile on his lips, a little thrill in his heart. To have found her unchanged and unspoiled in the midst of all this heathen luxury! To have found her beautiful and true and sweet! To have thought that he toiled for the sake of the mothers, not knowing it was for Miriam, not understanding that there was just one maiden—only one!
But nights have a way of ending, and dawn came as radiant as Miriam’s countenance when the household thronged around the altar which had been erected in one of the more private courtyards immediately after Naaman’s return from Israel. In appearance it was merely a raised mound made of ordinary Syrian soil upon which had been spread the “two mules’ burden of earth” he had begged from the Man of God. Thus hallowed by the sacred earth from the locality in which Jehovah was supposed to especially delight, it was considered a fitting place for the burnt-offering which Naaman himself piously sacrificed each morning.
This accomplished, the worshipers kneeling in petitions more or less heartfelt, they rose and the service closed with a psalm of David, painstakingly taught by Miriam to the household singers. To-day the hymn concerned itself with the wonders of nature, not in and for themselves as did the psalms of the sun-worshipers, but extolling Jehovah as Lord over nature.