strong were the ties, which bound the Egyptian mother to the son of the
patriarch; and in Ishmael must all the hopes and affections of Hagar
have centred. Could she, indeed, have penetrated the future, could she
have seen her race, the seed of her son, filling the desert and dwelling
as princes; while the seed of Sarah and of Abraham were held, as if in
retribution of her own sufferings, in bondage in her own native
land,--could she have passed through the intervening ages and seen the
children of Ishmael issuing from their desert and setting their feet
upon the necks of the proudest and mightiest, imposing their faith upon
a world, while they marched forth conquering and to conquer--could she
have contrasted the triumphant warriors of Arabia, the caliphs of the
east and the west, with the wandering, desolate, persecuted,
trodden-down tribes of Israel--the proudest expectations of the woman
and the mother would have been all answered. Could she have penetrated
the meaning of the words she must have so often pondered, she would have
found that the loftiest dreams of the rankest ambition were to be more
than realized.

But dimly and faintly must she have apprehended the meaning of the
mysterious prophecy, even while she trusted the accompanying promise. As
she saw Ishmael, the only child in the tent of the patriarch, and loved
by the father, she perhaps allowed herself to hope that he was yet to be
the heir, and that in his future honours she was to find a full
recompense for all the trials of her blighted youth.

After long years of waiting, Sarah embraced a son, and the event, so
joyous to the parents, awoke afresh the bitter remembrances of Hagar,
while it roused her to the consciousness of her present lot and of all
the injuries inflicted upon her.