They are getting ready now for home; their sacks are filled with corn again, and again the money is put back into each sack’s mouth, and worst of all, Joseph’s silver cup is slipped into the mouth of Benjamin’s sack. Ere they are fairly out of the city Joseph posts his steward after them, abruptly charging them with having ungratefully stolen his lord’s silver cup. Consciously innocent and deeply indignant, they are rash enough to say――Let the man in whose sack it is found die, and take all the rest of us for slaves! How were they amazed and overwhelmed when the cup was found in Benjamin’s sack! They rent their clothes in bitterness of heart, and all return to the city. Judah comes to the front here; it is “Judah and his brethren” who come to Joseph’s house, and Judah who makes the plea in behalf of Benjamin. The historian is careful to say again that when they met Joseph “they fell before him on the ground.” He also remarks that Joseph was yet in his house, having remained there ever since the caravan left in the early morning, too full of thought on this subject to turn to any other business.――――Now he expects to learn how they feel toward Benjamin and toward their aged father. He must be sure they are all right on these points before he lifts the vail and shows them himself.――――They are brought back as criminals before him. With a sternness that is not at all in his heart but in his assumed manner only, he says――What deed is this that ye have done? Were ye not aware that I have the power of positive and certain divination?――――Judah is in deep perplexity――but he speaks frankly: “What shall we say unto my lord? or how shall we clear ourselves? God hath found out the iniquity of thy servants”――which words can not, it would seem, refer to any iniquity in the matter of the silver cup, but must have referred to the long past crime of the brethren toward Joseph. He can not say less than that they will all become the slaves of Joseph, all including even Benjamin.――――No, replies Joseph; I want only the guilty man, Benjamin; all the rest of you may go in peace to your father!――――Now the crisis so long dreaded has come. A terrible responsibility falls upon Judah. With wonderful simplicity, with most touching filial affection toward his father, and with masterly skill he rises to the moral sublimity of the occasion. He comes near to Joseph and begins his great plea. Every reader must study it. We shall need to go far to find more touching eloquence, a more masterly setting forth of the facts of the case including the whole story from the beginning to the end. The case of the aged father and of his two younger sons left him by his best beloved wife――put in the aged patriarch’s own words――ran thus: “Ye know that my wife bear me two sons, and the one went out from me, and I said――Surely he is torn in pieces, and I have not seen him since; and if ye take this also from me, and mischief befall him, ye shall bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.