The lesson being over, Hannah advanced, and her brother followed. Azariah turned and greeted the new comer not unkindly, but with a certain reserve, for he could not forget that his visitor was a Menander as well as a Micah, and that he had been the friend of the traitorous Jason, and the yet more traitorous Menelaüs. The children, after their first feeling of alarm, for a strange face was seldom seen in that home, and when Miriam, the elder, had recognized her uncle, showed no reserve in their welcome. They clung about his neck, and kissed him. They insisted on his coming to see their pets—Miriam’s turtle-doves, and Judith’s dormice, and the little gazelle fawn which they owned in common. “They have not heard a word against me,” thought Micah to himself; and this affectionate loyalty touched him to the heart. From his sister he might, perhaps, have expected it, but that the stern Azariah, a narrow-minded bigot, without a kindly thought for any that did not walk in his way, as he had been accustomed to think of him—that Azariah himself should have dealt with him so mercifully, was a surprise as it was also a reproach. He stopped with them for the rest of the day, and after the evening meal, when the little ones had gone to bed, after making their uncle promise that he would soon come and see them again, the three had much serious talk together. Micah had, of course, the family history to hear, for, stranger as he had been to them for some years past, he knew scarcely anything about it. He learnt now for the first time that a little boy had been born who, had he lived, would have been about two years younger than Judith. The mother had much to say about his beauty and goodness, and his rare promise of intelligence. Micah was touched all the more because he could not forgive himself for the alienation which had prevented him from saying a word of comfort to his sister in the hour of her bereavement. “It was, indeed, a terrible loss,” and he rose from his seat and kissed her. He felt that this little proof of his love would be better than many words. “Nay,” she said, with a cheerfulness that almost startled him—“nay; you must not say that we have lost our dear little Joshua. I know that I have a son still, though he is not here. I confess that it was very hard to part with him. But he is quite safe in Abraham’s bosom, safer and better off,” she added, with a sad smile, “than he would be here; and some day I shall see him, and show him to you, dear Micah, and we shall be happy together.” After this the little party had much talk about the state of things in the present, and the prospects of the future. Again Micah was astonished to see the cheerfulness and courage which his sister and her husband kept up in the midst of circumstances which must have been most disheartening.