Her eager, parted lips told how she hung upon his speech. He smiled down gratefully into her great black lustrous eyes, though a sigh escaped him as he said:
“Ah! I wish Leah would only show a little of the interest in all this, that you do, Zillah!”
“You must not blame Leah too much, Abraham,” the girl answered quickly. “She has her children, you know. Mother always said that if ever Leah had babies, that there would be nothing else in the world for her except the babies. Besides, Abraham, no two of us are constituted alike, and Leah is what the Gentiles about here call happy-go-lucky. But, Abraham, tell me more of what you think of Messiah’s coming. Leah’s five minutes will be sure to run to a quarter of an hour.”
“I do think Messiah is coming soon,” cried the young fellow excitedly. “Who knows? Perhaps when the Passover comes again, and we set His chair, and open the door for Him to enter, that He will suddenly come. Did I tell you, Zillah, about the date discovery at Safed, in Palestine?”
“No, what is it?” The girl’s face glowed with a strange earnestness, her voice rang with it.
“Safed,” he went on, quickly, “is a little town to the north-west of Galilee. Our Rabbi there has discovered from our sacred books, that Messiah’s coming, and the overthrow of our enemies, will be in the year five thousand six hundred and sixty-six—nineteen hundred and six according to the Gentile reckoning. Our Father Moses, and all the children of Israel sang, when Jehovah delivered them from the Red Sea:—‘Yea, by the force of Thy swelling waves hast Thou demolished those who arose against Thee. Thou didst discharge Thy wrath, it devoured them up like stubble.’ Our Rabbis—and even the Christian Gentile teachers—agree that the deliverance of our race from Pharaoh, and the destruction of his hosts, picture our race’s future as well as its past. And the numerical value of ‘Thou shalt overthrow’ (part of those two song-stanzas I have just repeated) gives the date I have mentioned as the time of our deliverance from all our troubles, when Messiah shall come.”
There was a sudden clatter of little feet outside at that moment, and a boy and a girl burst into the room.
“What do you think, father?” cried the boy, with the excited impulsiveness of a child bursting with news. “A boy—he’s a Gentile, of course—whom I know says that Messiah has come, that the cursed Nazarene was He, and that——”
“We will go to supper, Reuben, and you and I will talk about that another time.” Cohen spoke quietly to his boy. He had his own reasons for checking the subject at that time.