While the feet of the guests were washing, which is the first duty of hospitality in the East, and indeed properly their welcome, Elisama and Selumiel were engaged in uninterrupted discourse, as if they had been sitting alone in the court, and rapidly ran over earlier and later times, Alexandria and Jericho. In the mean time Iddo and some of the guests had joined Helon, and were congratulating him upon his first pilgrimage. Selumiel and Iddo had in common a hearty and straight forward character, by which they might have been known as brothers. But, besides that they were attached to different parties in religion, Iddo had more liveliness and cheerfulness. “My son out of Egypt,” he addressed Helon, “to-morrow at this time, when the Passover begins, thou wilt see what thou hast never seen before. Already, on the tenth of the month, I chose a lamb without blemish for the occasion. Before sunset this evening, I fetched the water into the house, with which the unleavened bread is to be made. If you please you shall go with me after supper and seek the leaven in the house. A young Israelite, who has come for the first time to the Passover, should leave nothing unseen, but learn all the practices of Israel in the most complete manner possible. But I forgot, you are come from Hebron to-day, and must be weary.” Helon seemed almost offended to be suspected of weariness, after a march made under such circumstances. With glowing cheek he repelled the imputation, and begged that Iddo would not spare him. “Just like his father,” exclaimed his host, “jealous of nothing so much as of being thought a genuine Aramæan Jew. To-morrow, I will conduct thee to his grave in the valley of Jehoshaphat. In truth he was a noble-minded man, an Israelite without guile. He died in this house, and it was of thee, Helon, that he spoke to me in his last moments.” He then related the circumstances of his death, and many anecdotes of his intercourse with him. Their connection had been much the same as that of Selumiel with Elisama. Helon listened to him, as if his father’s spirit spoke from his lips, so intimate had been their friendship, so similar their characters.