Only this, I would have remained where there is honor and fame and
everything beautiful. You might have been the greatest of the great,
the happiest of the happy--this I have learned, but you made a different
choice."

"Because duty commanded it," Joshua answered gravely, "because I will no
longer serve any one save the people among whom I was born."

"The people?" exclaimed Ephraim, contemptuously. "I know them, and you
met them at Succoth. The poor are miserable wretches who cringe under
the lash; the rich value their cattle above all else and, if they are the
heads of the tribes, quarrel with one another. No one knows aught of
what pleases the eye and the heart. They call me one of the richest of
the race and yet I shudder when I think of the house I inherited, one of
the best and largest. One who has seen more beautiful ones ceases to
long for such an abode."

The vein on Joshua's brow swelled, and he wrathfully rebuked the youth
for denying his own blood, and being a traitor to his people.

The guard commanded silence, for Joshua had raised his reproving voice
louder, and this order seemed welcome to the defiant youth. When, during
their march, his uncle looked sternly into his face or asked whether he
had thought of his words, he turned angrily away, and remained mute and
sullen until the first star had risen, the night camp had been made under
the open sky, and the scanty prison rations had been served.

Joshua dug with his hands a resting place in the sand, and with care and
skill helped the youth to prepare a similar one.