100 The Brothers.

 

from home, and Jacob told Joseph to go and
see how they were getting on. He went, and
when his brothers saw him, they felt very
angry with him, and said—

“* Look, this dreamer is coming.’

“And a dreadful thought came to them,
and they said, ‘Let us kill him, and throw
him down some hole, and tell our father that
a wild beast has eaten him; and we shall see
what will become of his dreams. But the
eldest brother Reuben would not hear of this
crime. He dared not tell his brothers so,
because some of them were so very violent
and wicked, but he tried to persuade them to
leave their brother in a great pit close by,
thinking, when they were gone, he could lift
Joseph out again, and take him home to his
father. So when poor Joseph came up to
them, they pulled off his coat of many colours,
and put him down into the pit to starve and
die. And just then there came up some men
who went about trading and buying slaves,
and as Reuben had left them for a little while,
they changed their minds and said they
would sell their brother for a slave. So they
lifted him up out of the pit, and sold him to
these strangers for twenty pieces of silver, and
he was taken away as a slave into a foreign