dentally the sorrow to find, that the father of Caphtor had not only taken away from the widow her little inheritance, but had also sold her son, the staff of her age, for thirty pieces of silver, the common price of a slave. But as this did not near pay the debt, he made a merit of not selling the rest of the family, and suffering the widow and her fatherless children to seek their bread, through a desolate and ensnaring world.

The assembly now broke up. Keroob and Sephora took their way towards home. They had not gone far before she suddenly missed him from her side; and, turning round to see what was become of him, beheld him on his knees, at the corner of the street. The sun was setting; it was the hour of evening sacrifice.

The widow also, whose heaving heart was overcharged with grief, hope, and gratitude, fell down to spread her sorrows before God, and seemed altogether unconscious or regardless of the presence of her fellow-creatures.

Sephora reverenced her feelings, and con

demned herself, that she should feel ashamed to follow her example; but she found it impossible to assume the posture of devotion in such a place. Yet as she waited for her father and his supplicant, and drew her wimple in thicker folds over her face, she felt that prayer had no essential attitude.

CHAPTER XXVI.

ON the fifth of the month Abib, Caphtor and Sephora, and their attendants, left Nain for Jerusalem, to be present at the feast of the passover. They took with them a tent and provisions for the journey, and utensils to dress them in; for the inns of the east are often nothing more than an inclosure for cattle, or at the best afford only bare walls for the accommodation of passengers, with sometimes a solitary attendant, who subsists chiefly by the charity of those who sojourn there. They proceeded in the direction of the mountains of Gilboa, and halted the first night in the valley of Jezreel. They intended to pitch their tent by the fountain, as they knew that caves abounded there, which might accommodate their servants and their camels. On approaching this spot, however, they heard the loud voice of merriment; and, on coming up to it, found it

already completely occupied. Ten folds of sheep, with shepherds presiding over each, encompassed the fountain; and every shaded spot the neighbourhood afforded, was already encamped over by Arvah of Gilboa, who had been holding his sheep-shearing in this valley for the last three days.

Arvah, who himself presided as chief shepherd of his flocks, was at this time engaged in calling his sheep one by one out of the fold; they each knew their name, and obeyed his voice. He had just delivered Naioth, his favourite sheep, to the shearers to be shorn, and was turning round to call another, when he beheld the travellers approach. He immediately quitted his employment, and ran forward to meet them and claim them for his guests. My friend," said he, taking the bridle of each of their camels in his hand, and addressing himself to Caphtor, "thou art a stranger, and since I have espied thee on the way, never refuse me the favour which I require of thee. Come, wash thy feet, and eat of my bread, and abide under the shadow of my tent, and

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tarry here with thy wife till the days of the feast are past, and after then pursue thy journey, and the Lord be thy safeguard by night and by day." They accepted his courteous hospitality for that night; and, dismounting from their camels, walked with them to his shearing-house. It was a cavern in the rock, that looked far down the broad and wooded valley of Jezreel, till the view was terminated by the mountains of Gilboa, whose scorched and barren heads seemed to have felt the power of David's curse.

The business of the day was now quickly over, and the festivities of it succeeded and were kept up to a late hour; but the travellers got leave to retire from them, that they might be ready for an early departure on the morrow. Their first stage was to Ginea, the frontier town of Samaria. It was situated towards the base of the western declivity of a hill, that bounded the utmost extent of the plain of Esdraelon, which here waved with corn; and, as the wind swept over it, looked like a sea of plenty. They did not enter the town, but reposed them