sheep and goats, and soon tent after tent was pitched on the green sward
in front of the dwellings of Amminadab and Naashon, herds were surrounded
by pens, stakes and posts were driven into the hard ground, awnings were
stretched, cows were fastened to ropes, cattle and sheep were led to
water, fires were lighted, and long lines of women, balancing jars on
their heads, with their slender, beautifully curved arms, went to the
well behind the old sycamore or to the side of the neighboring canal.

This morning, as on every other working-day, a pied ox with a large hump
was turning the wheel that raised the water. It watered the land, though
the owner of the cattle intended to leave it on the morrow; but the slave
who drove it had no thought beyond the present and, as no one forbade
him, moistened as he was wont the grass for the foe into whose hands it
was to fall.

Hours elapsed ere the advancing multitude reached the camp, and Miriam
who stood describing to Amminadab, whose eyes were no longer keen enough
to discern distant objects, what was passing below, witnessed many an
incident from which she would fain have averted her gaze.

She dared not frankly tell the old man what she beheld, it would have
clouded his joyous hope.

Relying, with all the might of an inspired soul upon the God of her
fathers and his omnipotence, she had but yesterday fully shared
Amminadab's confidence; but the Lord had bestowed upon her spirit the
fatal gift of seeing things and hearing words incomprehensible to all
other human beings. Usually she distinguished them in dreams, but they
often came to her also in solitary hours, when she was deeply absorbed by
thoughts of the past or the future.