Sextus bent another long wondering gaze at the noble face that was bending over him, and then resigned himself with closed eyes to the gentle hands that laid him carefully down to a smoother and softer resting place. In a few moments he was asleep.
“Well,” said Seti, with a grave smile, “you _are_ a very strange young man. Is this the way you treat enemies in your country? If so it is very unlike any other country that I happen to know. Still, I confess that the way, unprecedented as it is, has a good look to it, and may be worth introducing into Egypt.”
“Say not _unprecedented_, my dear grandfather,” said Rachel, “for you know Deity treats men better than they deserve; and the Christ, it seems, does the same. How forbearing he is toward his enemies, when he could so easily overwhelm them!”
Aleph was looking dreamily at the banks now fast gliding by (for the pinnace was in full motion again and the dawn was kindling all things into color and beauty), but at the word _Christ_ he turned inquiringly toward Rachel. She understood him.
“Yes,” she said, “we have something new to tell you about the Christ—something new and wonderful that comes from a witness that I can trust—my own mother”—and she proceeded to relate to him the history of the resurrection of Lazarus and the consequent exasperation and plottings of his enemies.
“Having had little else to do, I have been thinking much of Him during the last few days,” returned Aleph, “especially of what the prophets, Isaiah and Daniel, say of his suffering character. ‘He was wounded for our transgression, he was bruised for our iniquities, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquities of us all: he was taken from prison and from judgment, and who shall declare his generation, for he was cut off out of the land of the living.’ And Daniel says, ‘And after three score and two weeks shall the Messiah be cut off, but not for himself.’ So I am expecting the worst and the best—the greatest sacrifice and the greatest salvation the world has ever seen. Jesus is surely a king; but at present his kingdom is not of this world. He will pass to his throne through the gates of death. Then of his kingdom there will be no end.”
He said this as a seer might say it, and with a new light in his face.
