when the old leader had still been engaged with his joy over the safety of the child. It was only when Rachor also had taken the bait and had blindly gone in pursuit of the first marauder, that the other had had the field to himself. The escape of the first was a pre-arranged feint. It had cleared the way for the other to snatch Aseneth from her guardians. And now both the Midianites were equally far out of reach, the one fleeing northwards with Aseneth, to join his band probably at some designated spot on the other side of the Nahal Musri, and the other making a detour towards the southeast, probably in order to take the news of the successful coup to some other horde of bandits, who might be holding themselves ready to descend upon the outwitted Hebrews within a day or two, and to prevent them from reaching the northern toll station in time to denounce the outrage to the authorities and to despoil the robbers of the profit of their capture.
These flying bands of Midianites were the terror of the desert. They were intimately acquainted with all its moods, and knew every cistern, pool, and oasis on the wide, dead waste. The several bands were wise enough to operate in concert, so that one band or another, engaged in an expedition of mischief, would be sure to be supported by another band, which would supply them with water and provisions, The Hebrews were as nearly powerless to cope with them, once they were marked as enemies, as a family of hares may be, within the foraging district of a family of hungry foxes.
All these considerations sprang up in Rachor’s brain as quickly and as clearly as spray from the splurge of a stone pitched into a rapid river. And the thought both of his helplessness and of his being tricked by the
