Her tones were the same low, musical ones he had heard that day: “I was so cold, Nathan, so cold. I watched a long time and saw no one, the soldiers from whom we escaped being some distance away as thou knowest, and I became persuaded that if any but an angel had built this fire it could be none other than a friend. Even now I feel it so.”
Nevertheless, the boy’s entreaties were not to be denied and after a time she allowed herself to be led away to their place of concealment. Isaac noted its direction. He was sick at heart. To think he had had the opportunity he craved and had not known it. He could have saved her these hardships and had not done so. And then a savage joy possessed him. She was his beyond all power of interference. He knew her hiding place, but he would be careful not to frighten her by any vehemence of word or action. He would treat her gently, as was due the maiden who would be acceptable in the great house he called “home.” He would first provide for her comfort and teach her to trust him, then, when he offered her honorable marriage, she would accept gladly, gratefully. It was all so simple. Perhaps it had been best, after all, that things had turned out this way instead of—
A little hand was suddenly slipped into his and a little voice cried excitedly: “I saw them by the fire: Rachel, the maid to whom my brother Benjamin is betrothed, and Nathan. Was it not nice she had her wedding veil to cover herself before all these strange, rough men? But Benjamin keepeth my father’s flock out on the hills of Israel and knoweth not how it fareth with Rachel. Wilt thou send him word?”
The soldier was stunned. He gazed at Miriam stupidly for a moment, for several moments. At last he seized her face between his hands and held it where the firelight shone full upon it. “Thy name, little maid,” he commanded, sharply.
“Miriam, daughter of Caleb.”
He fell back a pace, repeating the words as if to recall memories: “Miriam, daughter of Caleb ... thy brother keeping his father’s flock on the hills of Israel.... Benjamin, sayest thou?... Thy village Hannathon, whose outgoing is the Valley of Jiptha-el.... Benjamin! Ah, strangely familiar hath thy appearance been to me. I wondered whom thou didst remind me of. And now that I recall it, not only have I heard thy name but I have seen thee. Thou wert the little maid with Rachel in the gorge, and there was a lad older than Nathan. ‘Eli,’ his brother, sayest thou? And I have taken captive Benjamin’s sister! Would that I had known it six days ago!”
He resumed his old position near the door of the tent, his head buried in his hands. “And this maiden, Rachel—Benjamin’s betrothed? Nay, it cannot be.”
But Miriam said it was; said it with so much detail he could not doubt; said it with a calm matter-of-factness that was torture unspeakable to the listener, who was ill with disappointment; rebellious at the thought of failure in that which he had resolved; stubbornly determined to admit no defeat as long as there was one ray of hope. At last, finding him quite unresponsive, Miriam crept away to her leopard’s skin bed and sobbed herself to sleep, not knowing that he was so young and inexperienced and pain so new and strange that he knew not how to meet it.
That night he fought the hardest battle of his life, a battle not with flesh and blood, which were easier to overcome, but with his own undisciplined spirit, and in the gray of the morning, as he watched a life embark on the Great Unknown, the better part of him won. When Miriam awoke he greeted her with the friendly smile she had come to expect. They would be on the march very soon, he said, but before they started perhaps they had better talk over something he had in mind, and then they fell to planning together for the relief of the wayfarers, Rachel and Nathan.