usually began. The heads of the tribes had informed them that the day of
liberation had arrived, and the Lord would lead them into the Promised
Land.

Here, too, as in Tanis, many had been faint-hearted and rebellious, and
others had endeavored to separate their lot from the rest and remain
behind; but here, too, they were carried away by the majority. Eleasar,
the son of Aaron, and the distinguished heads of the tribe of Judah, Hur
and Naashon, had addressed the multitude, as Aaron and Nun had done in
the city of Rameses. But Miriam, the virgin, the sister of Moses, had
gone from house to house, everywhere awakening the fire of enthusiasm in
men's hearts, and telling the women that the morrow's sun would usher in
for them and their children a new day of happiness, prosperity, and
freedom.

Few had been deaf to the appeals of the prophetess; there was an air of
majesty, which compelled obedience, in the bearing of this maiden, whose
large black eyes, surmounted by heavy dark eye-brows, which met m the
middle, pierced the hearts of those on whom her gaze was bent and seemed
to threaten the rebellious with their gloomy radiance.

The members of every household went to rest after the festival with
hearts uplifted and full of hope. But what a change had passed over them
during the second day, the night that followed it, and the next morning!
It seemed as though the desert wind had buried all their courage and
confidence in the dust it swept before it. The dread of going forth to
face an unknown future had stolen into every heart, and many a man who
had waved his staff full of trust and joyful enterprise was now held, as
if with clamps and fetters, to his well-tilled garden, the home of his
ancestors, and the harvest in the fields, which had just been half