BOYS OF THE BIBLE. 69

desert, how wearily and slowly the miles slip! A tamarind
that seemed hours ago to stand only just a little ahead,
inviting the travelers to come under its shadow, now is as
far off as ever, or seemingly so. Night drops upon the
desert and the travelers are pillowless. Ishmael, very weary,
I suppose instantly falls asleep: Hagar—as the shadows of
the night begin to lap over each other—Hagar presses her
weary boy to her bosom. A star looks out and every
falling tear it kisses with a sparkle. A wing of wind comes
over the hot earth and lifts the locks from the fevered
brow of the boy. Hagar sleeps fitfully and in her dreams
travels over the weary day and half awakes her son by
crying out in her sleep: ‘Ishmael! Ishmael!’

‘““And so they go onday after day and night after night, for
they have lost their way. No path in the shifting sands; no sign
in the burning sky. The sack empty of the flour; the water
gone from the bottle. What shall she do? As she puts her
fainting Ishmael under a stunted shrub of the arid plain, she
sees the blood-shot eye, and feels the hot hand, and watches
the blood bursting from the cracked tongue, and there is a
shriek in the desert of Beer-sheba: ‘We shall die! We
shall die!’ Now, no mother was ever made strong enough
to hear- her son cry in vain for a drink. Heretofore she
had cheered her boy by promising a speedy end of the jour-
ney, and even smiled upon him when he felt desperately
enough. Now, there is nothing to do but place him under
a shrub and let him die. She had thought that she would
sit there and watch until the spirit of her boy would go
away forever, and then she would breathe out her own life
on his silent heart; but as the boy begins to claw his tongue
in agony of thirst, and struggles in distortion, and begs his
mother to slay him, she cannot endure the spectacle. She