WHEN dawn came Miriam was in a heavy slumber. Strange surroundings, terror, and grief had taken as large a part in keeping her long awake as her bed on the hard floor or the chill dampness of the cave. She was still sobbing. The young captain bent over her pityingly for an instant and tucked in the leopard’s skin to keep her warm, then, leaving a guard at the door, he and the rest of his men departed upon their errand. When she awoke she discerned Nathan’s sullen face in the half light, and it aroused her to an immediate comprehension of their plight.
He whispered to her: “Thinkest thou I shall go to Damascus a captive? Did the Man of God save me from bondage in my own country only to go into worse in a heathen land? Nay, but I shall escape, and when I am gone be not anxious for me nor unhappy for thyself. I shall come back to my mother and Eli, and some day we shall rescue thee. Do thou put confidence in my words. Look here.”
He bared his arm and shoulder and with gentle fingers she touched the welts and bruises, exclaiming compassionately.
He was still unconquered, defiant. “The soldiers gave these to me.”
“But not when thou wert good and obedient, Nathan.”
“Nay,” he admitted, and fell into a shamefaced silence.
She considered a moment. “It seemeth to me, Nathan, there be times when we cannot help what we do, only how we do. Dost thou not remember how our father Joseph was sold into bondage in Egypt? If he had refused to make himself useful or been unfaithful in his tasks—”
Nathan placed his fingers warningly on his lips and Miriam ceased speaking as the soldiers swarmed into the cave, so putting an end to conversation.
Breakfast had long been over for the men, but in the hurry of departure the youthful commander did not forget a handful of raisins and dried figs, together with some parched corn, for his small prisoners. He insisted that they eat, then, taking the hand of each, they left the prophet’s cave, turned their backs upon the gorge, and walked leisurely the valley road to its head, where the animals awaited them.
“Hast thou ever been on a horse, little maid?”
“I never saw one but once. That was when the king’s messenger passed this way.”
“I shall have to set thee in front of me, on my horse. He will go faster than an ass but not so fast as a camel at top speed, and in six days, or maybe seven, we shall be in Damascus. We travel slowly to accommodate our speed to that of our beasts of burden, heavily laden with stores from thy rich little valley. The lad will be on another horse in front of one of the men, but they are rough and boisterous. Wouldst thou not rather ride with me?”
Without waiting for assent he lifted her gently to the back of the animal, gave a few directions to his men, and the column began to move. There was no saddle and she found herself slipping. She grasped desperately at the horse’s mane, but Isaac had anticipated this and held her firmly with one arm.
“It will be easier when thou art more used to riding,” he comforted, “but I will not let thee fall.”
A long, last look at the village on the hillside and then, with eyes that saw not for tears and a heart that seemed to weigh much more than her sturdy little body, Miriam left behind all that was dear to her and began the journey into a far country.
An hour later a maiden climbed slowly and painfully the steep path up from the valley. At the top she met a woman with horrible cuts across the face and body, weak from loss of blood and leaning on the shoulder of a lad whose right arm hung useless at his side.
“Art thou hurt, Judith?”
“Nay, Hannah, but if thou hadst fled from one terror to another ever since yesterday afternoon when I first beheld the soldiers coming up the valley, and had finally lain concealed for hours, not daring to move lest thou be discovered, chilled by the heavy night dews, stiff and cramped, frightened and lacking food, thou also wouldst walk with difficulty.”
Eli was horrified, reproachful: “Thou knewest the Syrians were upon us and madest no effort to warn the city? We might have put up a better defense or saved some of our supplies by hiding them. As it is, many have suffered, a few even unto death.”
He paused and looked shudderingly at a swiftly approaching cloud which darkened the air, then quickly drew his mother inside the nearest house. “The vultures descend, having scented their prey from afar, yet few were slain and they only because of desperate resistance. The pale young man, scarce older than I, who seemed to command the party, had his men well under control. He reproved the soldier who smote thee, mother, and stooped over thee with horror in his eyes, himself tying the cloth which saved thee from bleeding to death and which I could not tie with one hand. I could love him were he other than a heathen and a robber!”
Turning to Judith, who had followed them, his voice became stern: “Knowest thou that famine stareth us in the face—and thou mightest have saved it?”
The girl’s tones were aggrieved: “Gladly would I have borne tidings, Eli, if I could have done so with safety, but I should have been captured. They have taken Nathan and Miriam, and a veiled maiden rideth in the rear who somehow reminded me of Rachel.”
Hannah clasped Judith’s arm: “Thou sawest Nathan and Miriam? Tell me—” and Judith, who had seen and heard almost everything of the eventful hours just past, told the story.
Meanwhile Miriam had left the village-crowned hills, the fertile valleys, the scattered oak groves; crossed a tree-studded, grassy meadow, a tangle of ferns and brushwood, and descended a gorge in the midst of which tumbled and roared and foamed a stream. The atmosphere seemed heavy with a heat not derived from the sun.
“Hast thou seen the Jordan before, little maid?”
Her answer was lost in the confusion of fording the river. At a place sufficiently shallow the horses were led down the steep and slippery bank, alarmed the moment their feet rested in the soft mud; terrified on reaching the shingly bottom to feel the swift tug of the current and the coldness of the rapid waters; cold after their enforced dip and taking quickly and easily the cliffs and steppes to the broad plateau above, which seemed the higher because of the depression of the Jordan Valley. The wind swept chill out of the snow-covered mountains to the north, toward which they were turning their faces, but after the heaviness of the valley they had just left, the air was exhilarating and fragrant with herbage.
“We are east of the Jordan now, little maid,” explained the young captain. “Seest thou how much easier it is to travel? It will be fairly level all the way into Damascus. Thou wilt see continual passing to and fro; much cattle and many camels and asses, and people that will look strange to thee, but fear not.”
He smiled at her reassuringly, but her eyes held a far-away look of inexpressible sadness, at sight of which he became silent.
On the sixth night of the encampment, Isaac was decidedly out of sorts. Several things had gone wrong and the party was much overdue. There had first been trouble among the pack-animals. This adjusted, it had been found that one of the soldiers, whose wounds had been thought of little consequence, had grown rapidly worse, and, lastly, their boy-captive had escaped. The veiled woman was gone likewise, but that mattered little.
In a retired spot, somewhat removed from the noises of the camp, they had spread a goat’s-hair tent and built a fire at a little distance so that its light would not play unpleasantly upon the features so soon to be relaxed in death. Isaac, who had taken the care of the sick man upon himself, watched alone save for Miriam, who lay asleep in one corner of the tent. For six days now he had been solicitous for her comfort, not from any personal interest but as a matter of war economics. It would be awkward if fright or cold or hardship should result in her illness and they so far from Damascus. On her part, the little maid was losing her fear of this young man, who treated her with no unkindness or lack of gentle consideration.
Lost in thought, he sat gazing moodily into the fire. Odd about the woman! Doubtless she had now joined herself to some one of the caravans they were constantly passing. Lemuel had described her as a camp hanger-on, and her veil was evidence of her loose moral character, since neither matron nor maid of good repute at that period went veiled save at marriage or while journeying, yet for six days she had shown every sign of shrinking timidity, and he had seen to it that she was treated with respect. He had asked Nathan if he knew her, but the boy had replied sullenly in the negative without turning his head. He had asked the little maid, but her eyes had been full of tears. For several reasons it had not seemed best to allow speech between the captives, and so the mystery had remained.
He had not himself questioned her, being irritated that she rode the horse he had brought for the maiden whose face had been in his memory ever since that day he saw her feeding pigeons in the gorge. He had meant to show special leniency to her family and thus secure their consent to a marriage, scorning to take her an unwilling captive; to force her into an alliance she would abhor, a sin of which certain other captains he could name had been guilty. However, the maid could not be found and he bothered his brain with a thousand conjectures.
That very day a puzzling circumstance had occurred. While searching for the fugitive lad, Isaac had caught the flutter of a garment and followed it straight to its hiding place. He had not found the boy, but this woman had knelt before him, clasping her hands—wondrously pretty hands, he had noticed—and in a voice remarkably soft and sweet had besought him to leave her. He had hesitated, and then Chivalry had gone out to succor Distress. Planting himself in front of her retreat until the last of his men had passed, he had followed them without one backward glance.
Thinking about it now, a doubt of Lemuel’s tale came to his mind for the first time. The veil might be explained away, but not that refinement of voice, not—a movement by the fire attracted his attention. He stared incredulously, for there, hovering over the blaze, was the girl of his dreams. It could be no other than the face he had carried in his memory all these months. Stranger even than the apparition, she had been the veiled woman, for the garment’s tatters were even now drawn tightly about her shivering form. Behind the girl somebody appeared and clutched her by the arm. It was a boy—the boy—but Isaac did not move. Nathan’s alarm exhibited itself in his voice.
“I awoke and missed thee. Rachel, knowest thou not that whosoever hath kindled this fire is not far off?” He scanned the darkness anxiously, but the outlines of the tent were not visible where it lay, outside the pale of the firelight. “Come, Rachel. Hast thou no fear?”
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.