Caleb fled, sobbing aloud like a child, out of the house.
Deborah closed the boy's eyes, and straightened him a little in the bed.

Then she stood over him there, and began to pray aloud.

It was a strange prayer, full of remorse, of awful agony, of self-defense of her own act, and her own position as the vicar of God upon earth for her child.

"I couldn't let him go astray too!" she shrieked out.

"I couldn't, I couldn't! O Lord, thou knowest that I couldn't! I would--have lain him upon--the altar, as Abraham laid Isaac! Oh, Ephraim, my son, my son, my son!" Deborah prayed on and on.