The Yoke: A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt
John Stuart Mill · en
'The Spouse to Potiphar,
Captain of the Royal Guard to
Apepa, Child of the Sun,
In the Twelfth Year of Whose Luminous Reign
She Died.
Rejected by the Forty-two at On, because of
Unchastity,
She Lies Here,
Until Admitted to the Divine Pardon of Osiris.'"
"Aye, I know," Deborah responded. "It is history to the glory of a son
of Abraham. Him, who brought our people here, she would have tempted,
but he would have none of her. Therefore she bore false witness
against him and he was thrust into prison.
"But the God of Israel does not suffer for ever His chosen to be
unjustly served, and he was finally exalted over Upper and Lower
Mizraim. And honor and long life and a perfumed memory are his, and
she--lo! she hath done one good thing. Her house hath become a shelter
for the oppressed and for that may she find peace at last."
Kenkenes looked at the old woman with admiring eyes. The quaint speech
of the Hebrews had always fascinated him, but now it had become melody
in his ears. In this, the first moment of mental idleness since
midday, he had time to think on Deborah. He knew that he had seen her
before, and now he remembered that it was she who had transfixed him
with a look on an occasion when Israel had first come to Masaarah.
But he did not remind her of the incident. Instead, he set about
counteracting any effect that might follow should her memory, unaided,
recall the occurrence. He had put her down on the matting, and the
running spiders and slower insects worried her.
"A murrain on the bugs," he said. "We shall have a creepy night of it.
Let us bottle this treasure and lay the mattress out of their reach on
the sarcophagus. Endure them a while, Deborah, till we make thee a
refuge."
He set the lamp in the opening from the outer into the inner crypt and
entered the second chamber. Rachel followed him, and the old Israelite
watched them with brilliant eyes.
Kenkenes swept the jewels as if they had been almonds into an empty
amphora and returned it to the rack. The mattress he laid upon the
broad top of the sarcophagus.
"A line of oil run around the coffin will keep the insects away,"
Rachel ventured. Kenkenes returned to the outer chamber for the jar of
oil; but Rachel took it from him.
"Let me be thy handmaid," she said softly.
He did not protest, and she reentered the crypt.
"Luckily the mattress is large enough for the two of you," Kenkenes
observed to Deborah, "but it will be hard sleeping."
"The Hebrews are not spoiled with couches of down," she replied.
"There are enough of the wrappings in yonder to take off the hardness,
but even with the matting over them they will be gruesome things to
sleep upon. They would bewitch your dreams. But mayhap ye will not
suffer from one night's discomfort."
"Where go we to-morrow?"