Deborah did not answer at once. Her sunken eyes were set and she
seemed not to hear. But presently she spoke:

"Thou hast said. But the Hebrew droppeth out of the inheritance of the
Pharaohs in thy generation, Rachel. The end of the bondage is at hand.
Thou shalt see it. Of a truth Israel shall perish. If its afflictions
increase for long. But they shall not continue. Have we entered
Canaan as God sware unto Abraham we should? Have we possessed the
gates of our enemies? Shall He stamp us out, with His promise yet
unfulfilled? Behold, we have gone astray from Him, but not utterly, as
all the other peoples of the earth. For centuries, amid the great
clamor of prayers to the hollow gods, there arose only from this
compound of slaves, here, a call to Him. Out of the reek of idolatrous
savors, drifted up now and again the straight column from the altar of
a Hebrew, sacrificing to the One God. Where, indeed, are any faithful,
save in Israel? Shall He condemn us who only have held steadfast?
Nay! He hath but permitted the oppression that we may have our fill of
the glories of Egypt and be glad to turn our backs upon her. He will
cure us of idols by showing forth their helplessness when they are
cried unto; and when Israel is in its most grievous strait and
therefore most prone to attach itself to whosoever helpeth it. He will
prove Himself at last by His power. Aye, thou hast said. Israel can
suffer little more without perishing. Therefore is redemption at hand."

Rachel had turned her eyes away from the humiliation of Israel to its
exaltation--from fact to prophecy. She was looking with awed face at
Deborah. The prophetess went on:

"Israel hath been a green tree, carried hither in seed and grown in the