CHAPTER XIX.

Joshua gazed intently around him. The sky was still bright, but if the
north wind continued to blow, the clouds which seemed to be rising from
the sea must soon cover it.

The air had grown sultry, but the guards kept awake and regularly
relieved one another. It was difficult to elude their attention; yet
close by Ephraim's couch, which his uncle, for greater comfort, had
helped him make on the side of a gently sloping hill, a narrow ravine ran
down to the valley. White veins of gypsum and glittering mica sparkled
in the moonlight along its bare edges. If the agile youth could reach
this cleft unseen, and crawl through as far as the pool of saltwater,
overgrown with tall grass and tangled desert shrubs, at which it ended,
he might, aided by the clouds, succeed.

After arriving at this conviction Joshua considered, as deliberately as
if the matter concerned directing one of his soldiers on his way, whether
he himself, in case he regained the use of his hands, could succeed in
following Ephraim without endangering his project. And he was forced to
answer this question in the negative; for the guard who sometimes sat,
sometimes paced to and fro on a higher part of the crest of the hill a
few paces away, could but too easily perceive, by the moonlight, the
youth's efforts to loose the firmly-knotted bonds. The cloud approaching
the moon might perhaps darken it, ere the work was completed. Thus
Ephraim might, on his account, incur the peril of losing the one
fortunate moment which promised escape. Would it not be the basest
of crimes, merely for the sake of the uncertain chance of flight, to bar
the path to liberty of the youth whose natural protector he was? So he