"Rachel!" the old woman reiterated, drawing off the cloak.
Without any preliminary pushing away of the straw, a young girl sat up.
A little bewildered, she divested her head and shoulders of a frowsy
straw thatch and stood erect, shaking it off from her single short
garment.
She was not more than sixteen years old. Above medium height and of
nobler proportions than the typical woman of the race, her figure was
remarkable for its symmetry and utter grace. The stamp of the
countenance was purely Semitic, except that she was distinguished, most
wondrously in color, from her kind. Her sleep had left its exquisite
heaviness on eyes of the tenderest blue, and the luxuriant hair she
pushed back from her face was a fleece of gold. Hers was that rare
complexion that does not tan. The sun but brightened her hair and
wrought the hue of health in her cheeks. Her forehead was low, broad,
and white as marble; her neck and arms white, and the hands, busied
with the hair, were strong, soft, dimpled and white. The grace of her
womanhood had not been overcome by the slave-labor, which she had known
from infancy.
"Good morning, Deborah. Why--thy bed--have I slept under it?" she
asked.
"Since the middle of the last watch," the old woman assented.
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