midnight
She dared not frankly tell the old man what she beheld , it would have clouded his joyous hope . Relying , with all the might of an inspired soul upon the God of her fathers and his omnipotence , she had but yesterday fully shared Amminadab 's confidence ; but the Lord had bestowed upon her spirit the fatal gift of seeing things and hearing words incomprehensible to all other human beings . Usually she distinguished them in dreams , but they often came to her also in solitary hours , when she was deeply absorbed by thoughts of the past or the future . The words Ephraim had announced to Hosea in her name , as a message from the Most High , had been uttered by unseen lips while she was thinking under the sycamore of the exodus and the man whom she had loved from her childhood -- and when that day , between midnight and morning , she again sat beneath the venerable tree and was overpowered by weariness , she had believed she heard the same voice . The words had vanished from her memory when she awoke , but she knew that their purport had been sorrowful and of ill omen . Spite of the vagueness of the monition , it disturbed her , and the outcries rising from the pastures certainly were not evoked by joy that the people had joined her brothers and the first goal of their wanderings had been successfully gained , as the old man at her side supposed ; no , they were the furious shouts of wrathful , undisciplined men , wrangling and fighting with fierce hostility on the meadow for a good place to pitch their tents or the best spot at the wells or on the brink of the canals to water their cattle . Wrath , disappointment , despair echoed in the shouts , and when her gaze sought the point whence they rose loudest , she saw the corpse of a woman borne on a piece of tent-cloth by railing bondmen and a pale , death-stricken infant held on the arm of a half naked , frantic man , its father , who shook his disengaged hand in menace toward the spot where she saw her brothers .