"I am of a silent disposition, I never tell what I see, I spoil not the sweetness of my fruits with vain tattling."[4] [4] Authentic. CHAPTER X The song ceased, drowned by an uproar and by a noise as of many people running. "Unbelievers! Enemies of Egypt!" cried some one. "Ye are singing when we are sunk in suffering, and ye are praising the Jewess who stops the flow of the Nile with her witchcraft." "Woe to you!" cried another. "Ye are trampling the land of Prince Rameses. Death will fall on you and your children." "We will go, but let the Jewess come out so that we may tell our wrongs to her." "Let us flee!" screamed Tafet. "Whither?" inquired Gideon. "Never!" said Sarah, on whose mild face appeared a flush of anger. "Do I not belong to the heir, before whose face those people all prostrate themselves?" And before her father and the old woman had regained their senses, she, all in white, had run out on the roof and called to the throng beyond the wall,-- "Here I am! What do ye want of me?" The uproar was stilled for a moment, but again threatening voices were raised,-- "Be accursed, thou strange woman whose sin stops the Nile in its overflow!" A number of stones hurled at random whistled through the air; one of them struck Sarah's forehead. "Father!" cried she, seizing her head. Gideon caught her in his arms and bore her from the terrace. In the night were visible people, in white caps and skirts, who climbed over the wall below. Tafet screamed in a heaven-piercing voice, the black slave seized an axe, took his place in the doorway, and declared that he would split the head of any man daring to enter. "Stone that Nubian dog!" cried men from the wall to the crowd of people. But the people became silent all at once, for from the depth of the garden came a man with shaven head; from this man's shoulders depended a panther skin. "A prophet! A holy father!" murmured some in the crowd. Those sitting on the wall began now to spring down from it. "People of Egypt," said the priest, calmly, "with what right do ye raise hands on the property of the erpatr?" "The unclean Jewess dwells here, who stops the rise of the Nile. Woe to us! misery and famine are hanging over Lower Egypt."