The rude warder's heart grew as soft as his office permitted; but he
would fain have raised his scourge against the older prisoner; for was
it not a shame to have such a sweetheart and stand there like a stone?

At first the wretch did not even hold out his hand to the woman who
evidently loved him, while he, the watcher, would gladly have witnessed
both a kiss and an embrace.

Or was this beauty the prisoner's wife who had betrayed him? No, no!
How kindly he was now gazing at her. That was the manner of a father
speaking to his child; but his mole was probably too young to have such a
daughter. A mystery! But he felt no anxiety concerning its solution;
during the march he had the power to make the most reserved convict an
open book.

Yet not only the rude gaoler, but anyone would have marvelled what had
brought this beautiful, aristocratic woman, in the grey light of dawn,
out on the highway to meet the hapless man loaded with chains.

In sooth, nothing would have induced Kasana to take this step save the
torturing dread of being scorned and execrated as a base traitress by the
man whom she loved. A terrible destiny awaited him, and her vivid
imagination had shown her Joshua in the mines, languishing, disheartened,
drooping, dying, always with a curse upon her on his lips.

On the evening of, the day Ephraim bad been brought to the house,
shivering with the chill caused by burning fever, and half stifled with
the dust of the road, her father lead told her that in the youthful
Hebrew they possessed a hostage to compel Hosea to return to Tanis and