ABSTRACT
The time was drawing near for Judith to return to Palestine from France, where she had spent several years. To David at first every day she had been away had seemed as long as a year, but he had tried and succeeded in making the time pass more quickly lately, by helping, in his free time, the men who were building the cottage in which he and Judith were to live when they were married. He also spent part of the long light evenings in preparing and planting the special fig tree near their future home, as well as a vine by the porch, as some Jewish colonists were doing in Palestine ; for they firmly believed that the unfulfilled prophecies of old would still be fulfilled, and none did David love better than those written by the prophet Micah in the fourth chapter. “They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid, for the mouth 178of the Lord of Hosts hath spoken,” etc. Then while planting the young olive trees around the home, he used to love to sing quietly to himself the beautiful hundred and twenty-eighth psalm, “Happy is everyone that feareth the Lord, that walketh in His ways, thy children shall be like olive plants round about thy table,” etc.
