Miriam and the child escaped the fire, but she died soon, of a fever, or of the fright and shock--he never quite knew--and the Rabbi Elkanah, granduncle of Miriam, member of the Sanhedrin and a very great man, took the boy into his stately Palace of Palms standing in glowing gardens down near to Jericho. “Come, Obil, be a man!” the rabbi said, standing like some great radiant iris in his full-bordered robes of pearl and blue, and laid a jeweled hand upon Obil’s bowed shoulder. “I will keep the boy. The blood of his mother’s race is plain in him. It will be worth while. As for you, doubtless this is a curse, yea, and a curse also upon Miriam, your wife. ‘As the bird by wandering, the swallow by flying, causeless the curse cannot come.’ “You have not put difference between the clean and the unclean. You have not washed the wrist nor cleansed the cup before and after. On the Sabbath day you have lifted many times the weight of the fig. You have eaten things not cooked with intention for the Sabbath, and you have on the Sabbath dried your coat beside the fire. For these things the wrath of Jehovah is kindled against you.” “Doubtless it is a curse,” said Obil humbly then. “But who of us common people can know the law? It may be that my son shall learn, if he attends with his whole heart.” “I will see that he attends,” answered the rabbi with bitter haste. * * * * * Obil went to Tyre, for it seemed good to him to be in a new land among new men, beside the tumult of the busy sea, far from that lone blackened field in old Hebron, far from the paths of the desert. Years went by and then he came riding home--just as he was coming up from the sea on this day of the Lord’s Great Year in Galilee--only then his heart was good and his hands pure. And his heart sang to itself that first day as he rode alone through the surf, as he climbed the uplands and clattered along stony ways, “How tall my son must be grown, and how wise! No doubt he is marked even now in the streets--the splendid young nephew of the great rabbi. He will hardly be noted as Barzillai, the son of Obil. But no matter. Some day doubtless he will be a rabbi. It may be that he has even learned by this time what is the Greatest Commandment. This is something the common people seldom can know.”