She shook her head. "Thou hast gone astray, Kenkenes. But thou wast untaught—"

"I have reasoned, Rachel, and the Power I have found in my ponderings, makes all the gods seem little. Thy God must manifest himself more fearfully; he must overthrow my reasoning before I can bow to him. And if, of a surety, he is greater than the Power I have made, will he need my adoration or listen to my prayers? Nay, nay, my Rachel. If thou wilt have me worship, let me fall on my face to thee—"

She interrupted him with a quick gesture.

"Kenkenes, have I prayed in vain for the light to fall on thee?" she asked sadly.

He smiled and moved closer, looking down into her face as he had done when he studied it as Athor.

"Nay, hast thou done that, and hast thou not been heard? Thou dost but fix me in mine unbelief. Did any god exist he would have heard thy supplications. Come, let us make an end of this. There are sweeter themes I would discuss. Where hast thou been, these many months? Not here in this haunted cave?"

His lightness sank her hope to the lowest ebb. A sudden hurt reached her heart. His unregeneracy suggested unfaithfulness to her. Their positions had been reversed. It was she that had been denied. Duty reasserted itself with a chiding sting.

"I have been a guest with Masanath—"

"The daughter of Har-hat!" he cried, retreating a step.

"The daughter of mine enemy," she went on. "She found me here by accident and took me to her home in Memphis. There Deborah died. And there, eighteen days agone, I discovered who it was that sheltered me, and now I return to my people."

"The fan-bearer did not find thee?" he demanded at once.

"Nay. Unseen, I looked upon his man. Alas! the wound to the daughter-love in Masanath! On the morrow she departeth for Tanis where she will wed with the Prince Rameses."

Kenkenes' hands fell to his sides. "Nay, now! Of a surety, this is the maddest caprice the Hathors ever wrought. In the house of thine enemy! Well for me I did not know it! I should have died from very apprehension. And all these months thou wast within sight of my father's doors!"

"I saw him once," she said.

"And discovered not thyself! How cruelly thou hast used thyself, Rachel. He would have told thee, long ago, why I came not back."

"Aye, now I know; but, Kenkenes, I could not go, fearing—"

"Enough. I forgot. Come, let us go hence. Memphis and my father's house await thee now."

"But I go to my people, even now," she answered, with averted face and unready words.

Kenkenes whitened.

"And leave me?" he asked quietly.

"Think me not ungrateful," she said. "I have said no words of thanks since there is none that can express a tithe of my great indebtedness to thee."

"I have achieved nothing for thee. Not even have I won thy freedom. I have failed. But shameless in mine undeserts, I am come to ask my reward nevertheless." He was very near to her, his face full of purpose and intensity, his voice of great restraint.

"That which once thou didst refuse to hear, thou hast known for long by other proof than words," he went on. "Let me say it now. I love thee, Rachel." Taking her cold hands he drew her back to him.

"Once I forbore," he continued, the persuasive calm in his manner heightening, "because I knew it would hurt thee to say me 'nay,' I told myself that I was brave, then, when the actual loss of thee was distant. But thou wilt leave me now and my fortitude for thy sake is gone. I am selfish because I love thee so. The extreme is reached. I can withstand no more. Dost thou love me, Rachel?"

What need for him to wait for the word that gave assent? Was there not eloquent testimony in her every feature and in every act of that hour he had been with her? But his hands trembled, holding hers, till she told him "aye."

"Then ask what thou wilt of me," he said, the restraint gone, desperation taking its place. "I submit, so thou dost yield thyself to me. Shall I pray thy prayers, kneel in thy shrines? Shall I go with thee into slavery? Shall I learn thy tongue, turn my back on my people, become one of Israel and hate Egypt? These things will I do, and more, so I shall find thee all mine own when they are done."

But she freed her hands to cover her face and weep. Kenkenes sighed from the very heaviness of his unhappiness.

"Thou shouldst hate me, if, to win thee, I bowed in pretense to thy God," he said weakly.

Perhaps his words awakened a hope or perhaps they made her desperate. Whatever the sensation, she raised her head and spoke with a sudden assumption of calm:

"Naught could make me hate thee, Kenkenes, but I should know if thou didst pretend. Thou art as transparent as air. Thou art honest, guileless—too good to be lost to the Bosom that must have thrilled with joy when he beheld what a beautiful soul His hands had wrought. Few of His believers have conceived the greatness of Jehovah as thou hast, O my Kenkenes. In that art thou proved ripe for His worship. Thou hast found His might to be so limitless that thou thinkest thyself as naught in His sight. In that hast thou gone astray. The mind is gross that can not heed the weak and small. Shall we say that the spinner of the gossamer, the painter of the rose is not fine? Shall He forget His daintiest, frailest works for His mightiest? Thou, artist and creator thyself, Kenkenes, answer for Him. Nay; not so! He, who hath an ear to the lapse between an hour and an hour, hath counted His song-birds and numbered His blossoms. For are they, being small, less wondrous than the heavens, His handiwork? Shall He then fail to hear the voice of His sons in whom He hath taken greater pains?"

She paused for a moment and looked at him. His expression urged her on.

"Does it not trouble thee when I, whom thou hast but lately known, am in sorrow? How much more then does thine unhappiness vex His holy heart, who fashioned thee, who blew the breath of life into thy nostrils! Wilt thou deny the Hand that led thee to me, here, in this hour—that cared for me during the season of distress and peril? Nay, my beloved, there is no greater virtue than gratitude. It is an essential in the make-up of the great of heart—wilt thou put it out of thy fine nature?"

Again she paused, and this time he answered in a half-whisper:

"Thou dost shake me in mine heresy."

"It is but newly seated in thy credence," she said eagerly, "and is easy to be put aside—easier to cast off than was the idolatry. Put it away in truth from thee and grieve thy Lord God no more."

"Would that I could, now, this hour. We may discipline the soul and chasten the body, but how may we govern the mind and its disorderly beliefs? It laughs at the sober restraint of the will; my heart is broken for its sake, but it is reprobate still."

"And I have not won thee?" she asked, shrinking from him.

"Give me time—teach me more—return not to Goshen. Come back to Memphis with me!" he begged in rapid words, pressing after her. "No man uncovered so great a problem, alone, in a moment. How shall I find God in an hour?"

"O had I the tongue of Miriam!" she exclaimed.

"Go not yet. Wilt thou give me up, after a single effort? Miriam could not win me, nor all thy priests. I shall be led by thee alone. A day longer—an hour—"

"But after the manner of man, thou wilt put off and wait and wait. Thou art too able, Kenkenes, too full of power for aid of mine—"

"Rachel, if thou goest into Goshen—" he began passionately, but she clutched him wildly, as if to hold him, though death itself dragged at her fingers.

"Hide me!" she gasped in a terrified whisper. "The servant of Har-hat!"

At the mention of his enemy's name, Kenkenes turned swiftly about.

Two half-clad Nubians were at the river's edge, hauling up an elegant passage boat. It was deep of draft and had many sets of oars. Approaching over the sand, hesitatingly, and with timid glances toward the tomb beyond, were four others. The foremost was the youth he had seen in Thebes. The next wore a striped tunic. Fourth and last was Unas.

"Now, by my soul," Kenkenes exclaimed aloud, "there is no more mystery concerning the boy." He turned and took Rachel in his arms.

"Now, do thou test the helpfulness of thy God! I have been tricked and I see no help for us. Enter the tomb and close the door, and since thou lovest honor better than liberty, let this be thine escape."

He put his only weapon, his dagger, into her hands. For an instant he gazed at her tense white face; then bending over her, he kissed her once and put her behind him.

"Go," he said.

"What want ye?" he demanded of the men.

"A slave," Unas answered evilly, stepping to the fore.

"Your authority?" The fat courier flourished a document and held up a blue jewel, hanging about his neck. Meneptah had forgotten his promise to return the lapis-lazuli signet to Mentu.

"Thou art undone, knave!" the courier added with a short laugh. He clapped his hands and the four Nubians advanced rapidly upon Kenkenes. There was to be no parley.

Kenkenes glanced at the youth. He was not full grown,—spare, light and small in stature.

"I am sorry for thee, boy," Kenkenes muttered. "Thy gods judge between thee and me!"

The Nubians, two by two, each man ready to spring, rushed.

With a bound, Kenkenes seized the youth by the ankles and swung him like an animate bludgeon over his head. The attacking party was too precipitate to halt in time and the yelling weapon swung round, horizontally mowing down the foremost pair of men like wooden pins. The weight of the boy, more than the force of the blow, jerked him from the sculptor's hands. Kenkenes recovered himself and retreated. As he did so, he stumbled on a fragment of rock. He wrenched it from its bed and balanced it above his head.

The powerful figure with the primitive weapon was too savage a picture for the remaining pair to contemplate at close quarters. Unas had made no movement to help in the assault. He had felt the weight of the sculptor's hand and had evidently published the savagery of the young man to his assistants. They had come prepared to capture an athletic malefactor, but here was a jungle tiger brought to bay. They retired till their fallen fellows should arise.

The vanquished were struggling to gain their feet, and Kenkenes noted it with concern. He was not gaining in this lull. There were other stones about him. He hurled the fragment with a sure aim, and a Nubian, who had been overthrown, dropped limply and stretched himself on the sand.

With a howl the remaining three charged. They were too close for the second missile of Kenkenes to do any slaughter, and he went down under the combined attack, fighting insanely.

"Slit his throat," Unas shrieked, tumbling on the captive, as Kenkenes' superhuman struggles threatened to shake them off. One of the men raised himself and made ready to obey. Holding to Kenkenes with one hand, he drew a knife from his belt and prepared to strike.

At that instant, the captive caught sight of a pale woman-face, the eyes blazing with vengeance. There was a flash of a white-sleeved arm and the thump and jolt of a dagger driven strongly through flesh. The murderous Nubian yelled and tumbled, kicking, on the sand. He carried a knife at the juncture of the neck and shoulder.

Instantly there was a chorus of yells.

"She-devil! Hyena!"

Unas detached himself from the struggle and plunged after Rachel, now in full sight of Kenkenes. He saw her retreat, warding off the fat courier with her hands; he saw her stumble and fall; he saw Anubis fly, with a chatter of rage, in the face of the courier, and struggling mightily, he threw off his captors, and leaped to his feet.

And then the light went out in Egypt!



[1] It was not uncommon for Egyptians to threaten their gods.



CHAPTER XXXV

LIGHT AFTER DARKNESS

A water-carrier in Syene was carrying a yoke across his shoulders and the great earthen jars swung ponderously as he walked. His bare feet disturbed the red dust of the path down to the granite-basined river, and tiny clouds puffed out on each side of the way at every footfall.

On a housetop in Memphis, a gentlewoman, in a single gauze slip and many jewels, lounged on a rug and gazed at nothing across the city. A flat-shanked Ethiopian fanned her listlessly and dreamed also.

A little boy, innocent of raiment, stood before a new tomb, opposite Tanis and awaited his father who labored within.

The water-carrier collapsed in his tracks; the lady shrieked; the Ethiopian dropped the fan; the little boy fell on his face—all at the same instant.

From the sea to the first cataract, from the deepest recess in the Arabian hills to the remotest peak in the Libyan desert, Egypt was blinded and muffled and smothered in a dead, black night—even darkness that could be felt.

Kenkenes stood still. Harsh hands were no longer on him and for an instant no sound was to be heard. Profound gloom enveloped him. His every sense was frustrated.

Some one of his assailants had found his heart with a knife and this was death, he thought.

Then strange, far-off murmurings filled his ears. From the river and beside him went up wild, hoarse cries of men in mortal terror. Memphis began to drone like a vast and troubled hive. The distant pastures became blatant and the poultry near the huts of rustics cackled in wild dismay. In the hills about beasts whimpered and the air was full of the screaming of bewildered birds.

With the awakening of sound, Kenkenes knew that another plague had befallen Egypt.

The dread that might have transfixed him was overcome by the instant recollection of Rachel's peril. No restraining hands were upon him, but he stood yet a space attempting to catch some rift in the thick night. There was not one ray of light.

While he waited it was more distinctly borne in upon him that during that space Rachel might suffer. He would go to her.

The night made a wall ahead of him which was imminent and indiscernible. It was like a great weight upon his shoulders and a pitfall at his feet.

He crouched and fumbled before him. His apprehension was physical; his mind urged him; his body rebelled. He would have run but he could barely force one foot ahead of the other. Illusory obstacles confronted him. He waved his arms and put forward a foot. The ground was lower than he thought, and he stepped weightily. He brought up the other foot laboriously, hesitatingly. This was not advance, but time-losing.

Meanwhile, what might not be happening to Rachel in this chaos of gloom and clamor? Why need he hide his escape? None of these near-by assailants had any care now save for his own safety.

He called her name loudly and listened.

There was no answer in her voice.

He forced himself to move, but had the next step led into an abyss his feet could not have been more reluctant. He flailed the air with his arms and accomplished another pace. He realized that he could not reach, in an hour, at this rate, the spot in which he had last seen her. Again he called, using his full lung power, but the only reply was an echo, or the hoarse supplications of men, near him and on the river. The river! Had Rachel gone that way too far and beyond retreat? The thought chilled him with terror and horror.

He execrated himself for his trepidation and strove wildly to proceed; but strive as he might he could not advance. How long since the darkness had fallen, and he had moved but two paces from the spot in which it had overtaken him! The outcry near him subsided into low murmurs of terror, and none lifted a voice in answer to his distracted call.

If Rachel had been near she would have replied to him. The alternatives he had to choose as her possible fate were death in the Nile or capture by Unas. The one he fought away from him wildly, the other made him frantic. And the realization of his own helplessness, with the picture of her distress at that moment, crushed him.

A tangle of wind-mown reeds tripped him and pitched him to his knees among the high marsh growth.

He did not rise.

The babe in pain cries to his mother; the man in his maturity may outgrow the susceptibility to tears, but he never outwears the want of a stronger spirit upon which to call in his hour of distress.

For Kenkenes it had been a far cry, from his careless days and his empyrean populous with deities, to this utter and unhappy night and one unseen Power. In that time he had run the gamut of sensations from a laugh to a wail. Now was his need the sorest of all his life. The most helpful of all hands must aid him. His fathers' gods were in the dust. What of that unapproachable, unfeeling Omnipotence he had created in their stead?

He fell on his face and prayed.

"O Thou, who art somewhere behind the phantom gods that we have raised! To whom all prayer ascends by many-charted paths; Thou who canst spread this sooty night across the morning skies and turn to milk the bones of men! Thou who didst undo my surest plans, who dost mock my boasted power, who hast stripped me till my feeble self is bared to me even in this dreadful night; Thou who wast a fending hand about her; who art her only succor now—to whom she prays—and by that sign, Thou Very God! I bow to Thee.

"My lips are stiff at prayer to such as Thou. But what need of my tongue's abashed interpretation of that which I would say, since even the future's history is open unto Thee?

"I have run my course without craving Thine aid, and lo! here have I ended—a voice appealing through the night—no more.

"Now, wilt Thou heed an alien's plea; wilt Thou know a stranger petitioning before Thy high and holy place? How shall I win Thine ear? Charge me with any mission, weight me with a lifetime of penances, strip me of power everlastingly, but grant me leave to supplicate Thy throne.

"Not for myself do I pray, O Hidden God! Not one jot would I overtax Thy bounty toward me beyond the sufferance of my devotion. But for her I pray—for her, out somewhere in this unlifting gloom, her tender maidenhood uncomforted—with night, with death, with long dishonor threatening her. Attend her, O Thou august Warden! Let her not cry out to Thee in vain! Be Thou as a wall about her, as a light before her, as a firm path beneath her feet. Do Thou as Thou wilt with me. Lo! I offer up myself as ransom for her—myself—all I have! Take her from me, deny mine eyes the sight of her for ever, blot me wholly out of her heart, yield me over to the wrath of mine enemies, and to Thine unknowable vengeance thereafter; but save her, Great God! save her from her enemy!

"Dost Thou hear me, O Holy Mystery? Is there no sign, no manifestation that Thou dost attend?

"Nay, but I know that Thou hearest me! By my faith in Thy being I know it, Lord!"

Peace fell on him and he slept.

In after years Kenkenes remembered only vaguely the long hours of that black and lonely vigil. This climax to a calamitous space eight months in length might have crushed a less sturdy spirit, but he was mystically sustained.

With the exception of a few intervals of short duration most of the time was spent in sleep, so profound and dreamless as to border on coma. The reeds had received him on a bed of crushed herbage and the upstanding ranks about him sheltered him from the blowing sand. The whilom assailants of the young man were not so kindly served by the gods to whom they appealed loudly and frequently. The city in the distance moaned and complained and the hills were full of fear.

In one of his profound lapses of slumber a hairy paw felt of Kenkenes' face. Later a drifting boat nosed about among the reeds at the water's edge. Presently one of the crew cried out, and a second voice said:

"Nay, fear not; it is an ape, by the feel of him. Toth is with us. It is a good omen; let him not go forth."

Silence fell again, for the boat drifted on.

At last dawn-lights reddened about the horizon; stars faded out of the uppermost as naturally as if they had been there during the three days of unlifting night. All Egypt showed up darkly in the coming day.

Kenkenes, in his couch of reeds, slept on peacefully. The mid-morning sun shone in his face before he awakened.

He leaped to his feet, cramped and stiffened by his long inactivity, and looked about him. Near by was a disturbed spot of wide circumference. Here had the struggle taken place. Here, also, some of the sand was stained with the blood of the Nubian, who had been wounded by Rachel. Fresh footprints led toward the water. He followed them with a wildly beating heart. There were no marks of a little sandal. At the Nile edge the deep line cut by a keel was still visible in the wet sand. His own boat and the other were gone. All other signs had been obliterated, for the wind had been busy during the darkness.

Across the cultivated land, or rather the land which would have been wheat-covered but for the locusts, he saw the huts of rustics, and to each of these he went, asking of the pallid and terror-stricken tenants if Rachel had come to them. Gaining no information, he went next to Masaarah, appeasing his hunger with succulent roots plucked from the loam beside the river. The quarries were deserted, the pocket in the valley, where the Israelites had pitched their tents, was as solitary as it had ever been. There was no place here to shelter the lost girl.

There were the huts to the north of the Marsh and the deserted village of Toora to search. He retraced his steps.

As he came again before the tomb he went to it. Half-way up the steps he stopped.

On a blank face of the rock, sheltered by a jutting ledge above it, was an inscription, a little faint, but he ascribed that to the poor quality of the pencil and roughness of the tablet. This is what he read:

"Her whom thou seekest thou wilt find in the palace of Har-hat, in the city."

Perhaps under other circumstances Kenkenes would have understood correctly the origin and intent of the writing. Already, however, his fears pointed to the palace of Har-hat as the prison of Rachel, and this faint inscription was corroboration. It appealed to him as villainy worthy of the fan-bearer. It was like his exquisite effrontery.

Kenkenes whirled away with an indescribable sound, rather like the snarl of an infuriated beast than an expression of a reasoning creature. Dashing down the sand, he plunged into the Nile and swam with superhuman speed for the Memphian shore.

He defied death as a maniac does. The river was a mile in width and teeming with crocodiles. But the same saving Providence that shields the adventurous child attended him. He clambered up the opposite bank and struck out for Memphis on a hard run.

He had but one purpose and that was to find Har-hat and strangle him with grim joy. The rescue of Rachel did not occur to him, for in his excited mind the simple touch of the fan-bearer's hand was sufficient to kill her with its dishonor.

He did not remember anything that Rachel had told him concerning her life in Memphis, or that Har-hat was in Tanis, and Masanath like to be the only resident in the fan-bearer's palace. His reasoning powers abandoned their supremacy to all the fierce impulses toward revenge and bloodletting of which his nature was capable.

Though it was day when he entered the great capital of the Pharaohs, the streets were almost deserted, and every doorway and window showed interiors brilliant with a multitude of lamps. Memphis was prepared against a second smothering of the lights of heaven.

The few pedestrians Kenkenes met fell back and gave room to the dripping apparition which ran as if death-pursued. One told him on demand where the mansion of Har-hat stood, and after a few slow minutes he was within its porch. He flung himself against the blank portal and beat on it. He did not pause to await a response. He felt within him strength to batter down the doors if they did not open.

Presently an old portress came forth from a side entry and Kenkenes seized her. Fearing that she might cry out and defeat his purpose, he put his hand over her mouth.

"Your master," he demanded hoarsely. "Where is he? Answer and answer quietly!"

For a moment she was dumb with terror.

"Gone," she gasped at last when Kenkenes shook her.

"Where? When?" he insisted.

"To Tanis, eight months since!"

"Was an Israelite maiden brought here? Answer and truly, by your immortal soul!"

"Many months ago, aye, but she departed three days ago for Goshen," the old woman answered falteringly.

"And she came not back?"

"Nay."

"Swear, by Osiris!"

"By Osiris—"

"And the Lady Masanath?"

"Gone, also, to Tanis with Unas, this morning."

"Thou liest! In the dark?"

"Nay, I swear by Osiris," she protested wildly. "The light came in with the hour of dawn."

Kenkenes released her and hurried away. He did not doubt that the old woman had told the truth. He had overslept the light. Unas could not have taken Rachel and Masanath to Tanis together. The Israelite would have been sent on before.

There was yet Atsu to question, and then—on to Tanis to rescue Rachel or to avenge her.

He met no one until he reached a bazaar of jewels near the temple square. An armed watchman stood before the tightly closed front of the lapidary's booth, above the portal of which a flaring torch was stuck in a sconce.

"The house of Atsu?" the watchman repeated after Kenkenes. "Atsu is no longer a householder in Memphis."

"When did he depart?"

"Eight or nine months ago, at the persuasion of the Pharaoh."

The lightness of the man's manner irritated the already vexed spirit of the young artist.

"Be explicit," he demanded sharply. "What meanest thou?"

"He was stripped of his insignia and reduced to the rank of ordinary soldier," the man answered, "for pampering the Israelites. He is with the legions in the north."

"Hath he kin in the city?"

"Nay, he is solitary."

Kenkenes walked away unsteadily. The nervous energy that had upborne him during his intense excitement was deserting him. His hunger and weariness were asserting themselves.

He turned down the narrow passage leading to his father's house. And suddenly, in the way of such vagrant thoughts, it occurred to him that the inscription on the tomb had been pointedly denied by the old woman's statements.

"Ah, I might have known," he said impatiently. "Rachel put the writing there for me when she left the tomb for the shelter Masanath offered her in Memphis."

The admission cheered him somewhat, but it did not repair his exhausted forces. By the time he reached his father's door he was unsteady, indeed, and beyond further exertion.



CHAPTER XXXVI

THE MURKET'S SACRIFICE

The murket sat at his place in the work-room, but no papyrus scrolls lay before him; his fine implements were not in sight; the ink-pots and pens were put away and the table was clear except for a copper lamp that sputtered and flared at one end. The great artist's arms were extended across the table, his head bowed upon them, his hands clasped. The attitude was not that of weariness but of trouble.

Kenkenes hesitated. For the first time since the hour he left Memphis for Thebes, months before, he felt a sense of culpability. He realized, with great bounds of comprehension, that the results of his own trouble had not been confined to himself. He began to understand how infectious sorrow is.

He crossed the room and laid a trembling hand on the murket's shoulder. Instantly the great artist lifted his head and, seeing Kenkenes, leaped to his feet with a cry that was all joy.

The young man responded to the kiss of welcome with so little composure that Mentu forced him down on the bench and summoned a servant.

The old housekeeper appeared at the door, started with a suppressed cry and flung herself at her young master's feet. He raised her and touched her cheek with his lips.

"Bring me somewhat to eat and drink, Sema," he said weakly. "I have fasted, since I returned here, well-nigh four days agone."

The stiff old creature rose with a murmur half of compassion, half of promise, and went forth immediately.

The murket stood very close to his son, regarding him with interrogation on his face.

"Memphis was full of famishing at the coming of dawn this morning," he said. "For the first time in my life I knew hunger, and it is a fearsome thing, but thou—a shade from Amenti could not be ghastlier. Where hast thou been—what are thy fortunes, Kenkenes?"

"Rachel—thou knowest—" Kenkenes began, speaking with an effort.

"Aye, I know. Didst find her?"

"Aye, and lost her, even while I fought to save her!"

"Alas, thou unfortunate!" Mentu exclaimed. "Of a surety the gods have punished thee too harshly!"

Kenkenes was not in the frame of mind to receive so soft a speech composedly. A strong tremor ran over him and he averted his face. The murket came to his side and smoothed the damp hair.

The old housekeeper entered with broth and bread and a bottle of wine. Mentu broke the bread and filled the beaker, while Sema stood aloof and gazed with troubled eyes at the unhappy face of the young master. Silent, they watched him eat and drink, grieved because of the visible effort it required and because no life or strength returned to him with the breaking of his fast. When he had finished, the bowl and platter were taken away, but at a sign the old housekeeper left the wine with the murket. After she had gone Mentu glanced at the draggled dress of his son.

"Thou needest, further, the attention of thy slave, Kenkenes," he suggested.

The young man shook his head. "Not yet," he said. "My time is short, and it is thy help I need."

The murket sat down beside his son.

Without further introduction Kenkenes plunged into his story. He had had no time to tell it four days before. Then he had asked for Rachel with his second word, and finding her not, had rushed immediately to the search for her.

Mentu heard without comment till the story was done. Most of it he had known from Hotep, and only the recent events at the tomb excited him.

When Kenkenes made an end the murket brought his clenched hand down on the table with a force that made the lamp wink and the implements rattle in their boxes above him.

"Curse that smooth villain Har-hat!" he cried in a tempest of wrath. "A murrain upon his greedy, crafty lust! The gods blast him in his knavery! Now is my precious amulet in his hands. Would it were white-hot and clung to him like a leech!"

Kenkenes said nothing. The murket's wrath was more comforting to him than tender words could have been.

"Who hath the ear of Meneptah?" the murket continued with increasing vehemence. "Har-hat! And behold the miseries of Egypt! Shall we put any great sin past the knave who sinneth monstrously, or divine his methods who is a master of cunning? The land is entangled in difficulty! Give me but a raveling fiber to pull, and, by the gods, I know that we shall find Har-hat at the other end of it! He is destroying Egypt for his ambition's sake! And that a son of mine—me! the right hand of the Incomparable Pharaoh—should furnish meat for his rending!" His voice failed him and he shook his clenched hands high above his head in an abandon of fury.

"Did I not tell thee?" he burst forth again, pointing a finger at his son. "Did I not warn thee from the first?"

Kenkenes raised his head.

"Can you avoid a knave if he hath designs on you?" he asked. "Have I erred in crossing his will? Have I sinned in loving and protecting her whom I love?"

Mentu's hands fell down at his sides. The simple questions had silenced him. His son was blameless now that he had expiated his offenses against the law, and from the moral standpoint his persistence in his claim on Rachel was just—praiseworthy.

"Nay," he said sullenly, "but since thou didst love the girl, how came it that thou didst not wed her long ago and save her this shame and danger?"

He saw the face of his son grow paler.

"The bar of faith lay between us," Kenkenes answered. "I was an idolater, she a worshiper of the One God. She would not wed with me, therefore."

The murket looked at his son, stupefied with amazement.

"Thou—thou—" he said at last, his words coming slowly by reason of his emotions. "The Israelite rejected thee!"

Kenkenes bent his head in assent.

"Thou! A prince among men—a nobleman, a genius—a man whom all women—Kenkenes! by Horus, I am amazed! And thou didst endure it, and continue to love and serve and suffer for her! Where is thy pride?"

Kenkenes stopped him with a motion of his hand.

"A maid's unwillingness is obstacle enough," he said. "Shall a man summon further difficulty in the form of his self-esteem to stand in the way of his love? Nay, it could not be, and that thou knowest, my father, since thou, too, hast loved. When a man is in love it is his pride to be long-suffering and humble. But there is naught separating us now save it be the hand of Har-hat."

"So much for Israelitish zeal! Thou hast been a pawn for her to play during these months. Long ago had she surrendered if thou hadst been—"

Kenkenes smiled. "She did not surrender. It was I."

"Thy faith?" the murket asked in a voice low with earnestness.

"Thou hast said!"

A dead silence ensued. Kenkenes may have awaited the outbreak with a quickening of the heart, but it did not come. Instead, the murket sat down on the bench and gazed at his son intently.

After a long interval he spoke.

"Thus far had I hoped that thou wast taken by the Israelite but in thy fancy. The hope was vain. Thou art in love with her."

Kenkenes endured the steady gaze and waited for Mentu to go on.

"There is no help for thee now," the murket continued stoically. "If the gods will but tolerate thee till the madness leaves thee after thou art wedded and satisfied, it may be that thou wilt turn again to the faith of thy fathers. But if I would fix thee in thine apostasy I should try to persuade thee now."

"Aye, and further, I should be moved to urge thee into heresy," calmly responded Kenkenes.

The murket flung up one hand in a gesture of dissent, and arising, walked toward the door of the workroom. There he leaned his shoulder against the frame and looked out at the night. Presently Kenkenes went to him and laid his hand on his sleeve.

The murket spoke first, proving what thoughts had been his during the little space of silence.

"There is little patriotism in thee, Kenkenes. Thou wouldst wed with one of Egypt's enemies and bow down to the God which has devastated thy country."

The hand on his sleeve fell.

"What did Egypt to Israel for a hundred years before these miseries came to pass?" Kenkenes asked. "Let me tell thee how Egypt hath used Rachel. She is free-born, of noble blood, even as thou art and as I am. Her house was wealthy, the name powerful. There were ten of her family—four of her mother's, six of her father's. Rameses, the Incomparable Pharaoh, had use for their treasure and need of their labor in the brick-fields and mines. This day Rachel possesses not even her own soul and body, nor one garment to cover herself, nor a single kinsman to shield her from the power of her masters! Well for Egypt that the God of Israel hath not demanded of Egypt treasure for treasure seized, toil for toil compelled, lash for lash inflicted, blood for blood outpoured! This desolation had been thrice desolate and Egypt's glory gone like the green grass in the breath of the Khamsin! And yet would such justice restore to Rachel the love she lost, the comfort that should have been hers? Nay, not even the sorcery of Mesu might do that. The debt of Egypt to Rachel is most cheaply discharged by the service of one life for the ten which were taken from her!"

"Let be; Israel shall cumber Egypt no longer," the murket muttered after a little; "and the quarrel between them shall be at an end. The hour approacheth when every Hebrew shall leave Egypt—shall be driven forth if he leave it not willingly."

"Thinkest thou so of a truth?" Kenkenes asked earnestly.

"Of a truth. Thou seest the plight of the nation. Can it endure longer? And if thou takest this Israelite to wife—" He paused abruptly, for he had pressed the problem and a solution opened itself so suddenly that it staggered him. Kenkenes understood the pause. Again he laid his hand on the murket's sleeve.

"On this very matter would I take counsel with thee, my father," he said gently. "The night grows, and my time is short."

Mentu turned an unhappy face toward his son and followed him back to the bench they had left. He felt, intuitively, that there was further grave purpose in the young man's mind and there was dread in his paternal heart.

"Thou knowest, my father," Kenkenes began, "that I may not give over my love for Rachel. I am free to love her and she to love me. There is no obstacle between us. Such love, therefore, in the sight of heaven, becometh a duty and carrieth duty with it. In the spirit I am as though I had been bound to her by the marrying priests. Her griefs are mine to comfort, her wrongs mine to avenge.

"She is gone and there are these three surmises as to her whereabouts. She may have escaped and returned to Goshen; she may have wandered to death in the Nile; she may have been taken by Har-hat."

He paused, and Mentu gazed fixedly at the lamp.

"I am going to Tanis," Kenkenes began, with forced restraint.

"Wherefore?" Mentu demanded.

"To discover if Har-hat hath taken her!"

"Go on."

"If he hath the Lord God make iron of my hands till I strangle him!"

"Madman!" Mentu exclaimed. "Thou wilt be flayed!"

"Be assured that I shall earn the flaying! The punishment shall be no more savage than the deed that invites it! But enough of that. If I go to Tanis and find her the spoil of the fan-bearer, thine augury will hold, I return not to Memphis. . . . If she was lost in the Nile—!"

"Nay! Nay! put away the thought if it wrench thee so. No man removed from his place during that night. We were caught and transfixed at what we did. For three days I sat in the court, where I was overtaken by the darkness, and in that time I stirred not except to slip down on the bench and sleep. The palsy seized all Memphis likewise—not one of my neighbors moved. But the resident Hebrews of the city seemed to have been warned, or else the favor of their strange God was with them. For it is said they came and went as they willed, carrying lamps."

Kenkenes looked at his father with growing hope.

"If that be true," he said eagerly, "if the palsy fell upon Egypt and not upon Israel, Rachel may have fled safely—she may have escaped them!" Mentu assented with a nod.

"She may have returned to her people," Kenkenes went on. "And if she be in Goshen I must reach her, find her, before her people depart. Having found her—" but Kenkenes stopped and made no effort to resume. Mentu set his teeth, his hands clenched and his whole figure seemed to denote intense physical restraint. Suddenly he whirled upon his son.

"Thou wilt go with her, out of Egypt?" he demanded.

"I shall go with her, out of Egypt."

Mentu gained his feet. "And dost thou remember that while I live my commands are yet law over thee?" he continued in a tone of increasing intensity. "Mine it is to say whether thou shall do this thing or do it not!"

He turned away and strode back to his post against the door-frame, his face toward the night. Kenkenes had slowly risen to his feet. Not for an instant did his father's authority appear to him as an obstacle. He knew that the murket's outburst was a final stand before capitulation. Kenkenes was troubled only for what might follow after his father had surrendered.

He followed the murket to the door and laid his arm across the broad shoulders.

"Father," he said persuasively. Mentu did not move.

"Look at me, father," Kenkenes insisted. Still no movement. The young man put his arm closer about the shoulders, and lifting his hand, would have turned the face toward him. But the palm touched a wet cheek.

The murket had consented.

* * * * * *

An hour later, when it was far into the second watch, Kenkenes changed his dress and made himself presentable. Then, without further counsel with the murket, he went silently and unseen to the portal of Senci's house. After a long time, for her household had been asleep, he was admitted, and the Lady Senci, perplexed and surprised, joined him in the chamber of guests.

With few and simple words he told his story, pictured his father's loneliness and, while she wept silently, begged her to become his father's wife—on the morrow.

There was no long persuasion; the need of the occasion was sufficient eloquence for the murket's noble love.

An hour after the next day's sunrise Mentu and Senci repaired together to the temple, and when they returned Senci went not again into her own house.

In preparing for his departure, Kenkenes asked at the hands of his father, not his patrimony, for that would have been an embarrassment of wealth, but such portion of it as might be carried in small bulk. In mid-afternoon Senci brought him a belt of gazelle-hide and in this had been sewed a fortune in gems. The murket had given his son his full portion and more.

At the close of day, with his face set and colorless, Kenkenes stepped into the narrow passage before his father's house. The great portal closed slowly and noiselessly behind him. He did not pause, but sprang into his chariot and was driven rapidly away.

At a landing near the northern limits of Memphis he took a punt, bade farewell to his sad-faced charioteer and pushed off.

The broken bluffs about Memphis, the temples, the obelisks, the Sphinx, the pyramids melted into night behind him. He kept his head down that he might not look his last on his native city.

He had reached that point where endurance must conserve itself.



CHAPTER XXXVII

AT THE WELL

Once out of its confines the Nile divided its flood over and over again and hunted the sea in long meanderings over the flat Delta. A few miles above On the separation began and continued to the marshy coast far to the north. From the summit of the great towers of Bubastis and Sais the glistening sinuosities of its branches might be discerned for many miles.

There was no thirst in the Delta. Nowhere did the capillary, the irrigation canal, fail to reach, even now in the season of desolation and loss. Half-green stubble, hail-mown and locust-eaten, showed where a wheat-field had been. Regular, barren rows were the only evidences of the lentil and garlic gardens in happier days, and the location of pastures might be guessed by the skeletons that whitened the uplands. Through fringes of leafless palm trees, stone-rimmed pools, like splashes of quicksilver or facets of sapphire, reflected the sky.

Half-way between On and Pa-Ramesu was one of these basins, elliptical in shape and walled with rough limestone. Moss grew in the crevices of the masonry and about it had been a sod of velvet grass. Black beetles slipped in and out among the stones; dragon-flies hung over the surface of the water and large ants made erratic journeys about the rough bark of the naked palms. Whoever came dipped his goblet deep, for there the water was cold. If he gazed through to the bottom he detected a convection in the sand below. This was not a reservoir, but a well.

Once only had it failed, but then Hapi, the holy river, had been smitten also.

The spring bubbled up at the division of a road. One branch led along the northern bank of the Rameside canal, eastward to Pa-Ramesu. The other crossed the northwestern limits of Goshen and went toward Tanis, in the northeast. Round about the little oasis were the dark circles where the turf fires of many travelers had been. The merchants from the Orient entering Egypt through the great wall of Rameses II, across the eastern isthmus, passed this way going to Memphis. Here Philistine, Damascene, Ninevite and Babylonian had halted; here Egyptian, Bedouin, Arabian and the dweller of the desert had paused. The earth about the well was always damp, and the top-most row of the curb was worn smooth in hollows. This, therefore, was a point common to native and alien, the home-keeping and the traveler, the faithful and the unbeliever.

The strait of Egypt was sore and the aid of the gods essential. The priests had seized upon the site as a place of prayers, placed a tablet there, commanding them, and a soldier to see that the command was obeyed.

The soldier was in cavalry dress of tunic and tasseled coif, with pike and bull-hide shield and a light broadsword. He was no ordinary bearer of arms. He walked like a man accustomed to command; he turned a cold eye upon too-familiar wayfarers and startled them into silence by the level blackness of his low brows. Wealth, beauty, age nor rank won servility or superciliousness from him. The Egyptian soldier was not obliged to cringe, and this one abode by the privilege.

He was a man of one attitude, one mood and few words. The Memnon might as well have been expected to smile. The earliest riser found him there; the latest night wanderer came upon him. When the day broke, after the falling of the dreadful night, the brave or the thirsty who ventured forth saw him at his post, silent, unastonished, unafraid.

Once only the soldier had been seen to flinch. Merenra, now nomarch of Bubastis, but whilom commander over Israel at Pa-Ramesu, paused one noon with his train at the well. The governor glanced at the soldier, glanced again, shrugged his shoulders and rode away. The man-at-arms winced, and often thereafter stood in abstracted contemplation of the distance.

Just after sunrise on the second day following the passing of the darkness, four Egyptians, lank, big-footed and brown, came from the northeast. By their dress they had been prosperous rustics of the un-Israelite Delta. But the healthful leanness, characteristic of the race, had become emaciation; there was the studious unkemptness of mourning upon them, and they, who had ridden once, before the plagues of murrain and hail, traveled afoot.

They were evidently journeying to On, where the benevolence of Ra would feed them.

They said nothing, looking a little awed at the soldier and puzzled at the stela. The warrior read the command and the unlettered men fell on their knees, each to a different god. The Egyptian was not ashamed of his piety nor did he closet himself to pray.

"Incline the will of the Pharaoh to accord with the needs of the hour, O thou Melter of Hearts!"

"Rescue the kingdom, O thou Controller of Nations, for it descendeth into death and none succoreth it!"

"Deal thou as thou deemest best with the destroyer of Egypt, O thou Magistrate over Kings!"

Thus, in these fragments of prayers was it made manifest that the worm was turning, apologetically, it is true, but surely. For once the prescribed defense of the Pharaoh was ignored. "It is not the fault of the Child of the Sun, but his advisers, who are evil men and full of guile." And in the odd perversity of fate for once its observance would have been just.

Having fulfilled the command and relieved their souls, the four arose and went their way, soft of foot and stately of carriage, after the manner of all their countrymen.

Next, descending with a volley of yells, a rout of the nomad tribes, mounted on horses, came from the southwest.

They were chiefly Bedouins, their women perched behind them with the tiniest members of their broods. But every child that could bestride a horse was mounted independently. Whatever worldly possessions the nomads owned were bound in numerous flat rolls on other horses which they led.

"Hail!" they shouted to the warrior, for the desert races are prankish and unabashed. A younger among them, without wife or goods, drew his gaunt horse back upon its scarred haunches and saluted the soldier.

"Greeting, bearer of many arms!" he said, and then addressed a near-by companion as if he were rods away. "Behold leaden-toed Egypt, cumbered with defense! Bull-hide for shield instead of the safe remoteness of distance, blade and pike for vulgar intimacy in combat instead of the nice aloofness of the launched spear—"

"Go to, thou prater!" interrupted a companion. "If thou lovest Bedouin warfare so well, wherefore dost thou join thyself to the Israelite who fights not at all?"

"Spoil!" retorted the first, "and new fields, O waster of the air! Hast thou not heard of Canaan?"

"Nay," shouted a third, "he hath an eye only to some heifer-eyed brickmaker among them!"

The soldier moved forward to the group and grounded his pike. His attitude interested them, and in the expectant silence he repeated the writing on the tablet.

"So saith the writing," the first speaker began, but the warrior interrupted him.

"It behooves thee to obey. Thou art yet within the reach of the awkward arms of Egypt."

"One against a troop of Bedouins," the trifler laughed.

"And there are a thousand within sound of my beaten shield," was the harsh answer.

"Come," said an elder complacently, "it does no harm to ask the alleviation of any man's hurt, and it may keep us whole for the journey into Canaan." He dismounted, and in a twinkling the company, even to the babes, had followed his example. Each dropped to his haunches, his hands spread upon his knees, and there was no sound for a few minutes.

Then they rose simultaneously and, flinging themselves upon their horses, departed as they came, like the whirlwind, over the road to Pa-Ramesu and the heart of Goshen.

These were part of the mixed multitude that went with Israel.

The dust of their going had hardly settled before a drove of hosannahing Israelites approached from the direction of the Nile. The soldier saw them without seeming to see and, moving toward the tablet, a four-foot stela of sandstone, planted himself against its inscribed face, and, resting his pike, contemplated the west.

The ragged rout approached, singing and shouting, noisy and of doubtful temper. A cloud of dust came with them and the odor of stall and of quarry sweat.

Want plays havoc with the Oriental's appearance. It acutely accentuates his already aggressive features and reduces his color to ghastliness. The approaching Hebrews were studies of sharp angularity in monochrome, and the soul which showed in the eyes was no longer a spiritual but a ravenous thing.

Being something distinctly Egyptian, the soldier brought their actual temper to the surface. They had suffered long, but their time had come.

The foremost flung themselves into his view and halted, hushed and amazed. When those behind them tried to press forward with jeers, they turned with a frown and a significant jerk of the head in the direction of the man-at-arms. These, also, subsided and passed along the sign of silence. A leader in the front rank walked away and took a drink, using his hands as a cup. The whole silent herd followed and did likewise, solemnly and thoughtfully.

Presently the bolder began to whisper and conjecture among themselves, hushing the sibilant surmises of the humbler with a cautioning frown. An old man, who could not lower his voice, quavered a resolve to "ask and discover," and started toward the soldier to put his resolution into effect. A wiry old woman seized him and drew him back.

"Wilt thou humiliate him with thy notice, meddler?" she demanded in a fierce whisper. "See him not, and it will be a mercy to him in his hour of abasement,—him who hath been balsam to the wound of Israel!"

She turned about and took the road toward Pa-Ramesu, the unprotesting old man trotting after her. The crowd followed, silent at first, then softly talkative, and finally, in the distance, singing and noisy once again.

A careening camel, almost white in the early morning sunshine, broke the sky-line far up the road leading from Tanis in the north. Very much nearer, to the west, two single litters, with a staff-bearing attendant, were approaching.

The camel rider was a Hebrew by the beast that bore him. Egypt had no liking for the bearer of the Orient's burdens and small acquaintance with him. Likewise the litters were Hebraic, for the attendant was bearded. The soldier kept his place before the stela and contemplated the distance.

The time was not long, though in that land of distances the camel had far to come from the horizon to the well, until by the soft jarring of the earth the motionless sentinel knew that the swifter traveler had arrived. Haste is not common in tropical countries, and the camel had been put to his limit of speed. A commoner spirit than the soldiers could not have resisted the impulses of curiosity concerning this hot haste. But he did not turn his eyes.

The traveler alighted before his mount ceased to move, and undoing his leathern belt with a jerk, he struck the camel a smart blow on the shoulder. There was the protesting buzz of a large fly and an angry, disabled blundering on the sand, silenced by the stamp of a sandal.

"Thou wouldst have it, pest!" the traveler exclaimed. "Thy kind is not to be persuaded from its blood-sucking by milder means. Ye mind me of the Pharaoh!"

He turned toward the well, and his glance fell on the man-at-arms for the first time. He started a little to find himself not alone, and a second time he started with sudden recognition. The well was between him and the soldier. He leaned upon his hands on the top of the curb and gazed at his opposite. Once he seemed about to speak, but the studious disregard of the soldier deterred him. Slowly his eyes fell until they were directed thoughtfully through his own reflection into the green depths of the well.

Although there were ten years in favor of the Egyptian, there was a certain similarity between the two men. Both were soldiers, both black and stern. But one was a Hebrew, no less than forty-five years of age. He wore a helmet of polished metal, equipped with a visor, which, when raised, finished the front with a flat plate. The top of the head-piece was ornamented with a spike. His armor was complete—shirt of mail, shenti extending half-way to the knees, greaves of brass and mailed shoes.

He was as tall as the Egyptian and as lean, but his structure was heavy, stalwart and powerful. His forehead was broad and bold, his eyes deep-set, steel-blue and keen. He had the fighting nose, over-long and hooked like an eagle's beak. The inexorable character of his features was borne out by the mouth, thin-lipped and firm in its closing. Even his beard, scant and touched with gray, was intractable. Here was an Israelite who was a warrior, a rare thing—but splendid when found.

After a pause he turned, and the camel knelt at his command. The litters had halted a little distance away under two palms that leaned their leafless crowns together. The attendant was hastening toward the well.

"Joshua!" he cried joyously.

"Even I," the Hebrew soldier said, walking around the kneeling beast. "Peace to thee, Caleb."

The two men embraced; the warrior imperturbably, the attendant tearfully.

"What dost thou away from Goshen?" Joshua asked, disengaging himself. "The faithful of Israel have been summoned thither from the remotenesses of Mizraim."

But Caleb did not hear, having caught sight of the Egyptian. The recognition startled him as it had all the others, but he did not hold his peace.

"Atsu!" he exclaimed. Joshua checked him.

"Vex him not with attention," he said in a lowered tone. "His fall hath been great, but it hath not killed his pride. He would speak if it hurt him to be unremembered."

"Hath he a grudge against us?" Caleb asked in astonishment.

"Nay, look thou at the writing on the tablet. He would hide its command from us. Is he not a friend to Israel still?"

He indicated the characters on either side of the soldier. The words were disconnected, but the sense was easily guessed. The command for prayers to the Pantheon of Egypt was not hidden, beyond conjecture, from the discerning. Caleb saw the meaning of the inscription, but looked to Joshua for further enlightenment.

"He would spare us," the abler Israelite said. "Let us return the kindness and see him not."

All this had the Egyptian heard, but his eyes, fixed so absently on the horizon, seemed to indicate that he was not conscious of his surroundings.

Joshua repeated his question.

"I was sent forth with Miriam," Caleb made answer. "She hath been abroad, gathering up the scattered chosen."

His eyes brightened and he clasped his hands with the gesture of a happy woman.

"Deliverance is at hand! Doubt it not, O Son of Nun! We go forth!" he exclaimed.

On the camel were hung a shield, a javelin and a quiver of arrows. Joshua jostled the arrows in their case before answering.

"Not as the moon changes," he said grimly. "The time for mild departure is past and the word of the Lord God unto Moses must be fulfilled."

"So we but go," Caleb assented, "I care not. And such is the temper of all Israel—nay," he broke off, conscientiously; "there is an exception, an unusual exception."

"There may be more," Joshua replied. "There is much in Egypt to hold the slavish. But the captain of Israel hath called me, out of peaceful shepherd life, to the severe fortunes of a warrior, and I go, no mile too short, no moment too swift, that shall speed me into Pa-Ramesu."

"And thou takest up arms for Israel?" Caleb cried. "Ah! but Moses hath gloved his right hand in mail, in thee, O Son of Nun! But," he continued, uneasy with his story untold, "this was no slavish content under a master. Rather did it come from one of the best of Israel."

"Strange that the lofty of Israel should regret a departure from the land of the oppressors." Joshua settled himself on the camel and the tall beast rose to its feet with a lurch.

"Even so," Caleb answered, patting the nose of the camel and arranging the tassels of its halter. "It was a quarry-slave, a maiden and of gentle blood among the nobility of Israel. She is in the bamboo litter, Miriam is in the other.

"We are come from farthest Egypt, fifty of us in three barges," he began. "To Syene have we been and all the Nilotic towns. To Nehapehu, and even deep into the Great Oasis were messengers sent, for we would not leave a single son of Abraham behind. And the masters surrendered them to a man! Was it the face of Miriam or the fear of Moses or the might of the Lord that tamed them? Hath Miriam a compelling glance, or Moses a power that came not from Jehovah? Nay, not so. Praised be His holy name!"

The mild Israelite clasped his hands and raised his eyes devoutly. But fearful lest his pause might furnish an opportunity for Joshua's escape, he continued at once:

"We were descending the Nile, below Memphis; the river sang and the hills lifted up their voices. There was rejoicing in the meadows and clapping of hands in the valleys. We possessed the gates of our enemies and Mizraim sat upon the shores and wept after us.

"Below Masaarah, the darkness fell; the sun perished in the morning and the stars were not summoned in the night, for the Lord had withdrawn the lights of heaven. But His hand was upon the waters and His glory stood about us and we feared not.

"And lo! there came a call upon Him from the shores to the east. The barge of Miriam paused and from the land we succored an Israelitish maiden. But when we would have moved on, she flung herself before Miriam and besought her:

"'Depart not yet, for there is another.'

"'Of the chosen?' the prophetess asked.

"'Nay, an Egyptian, but better and above his kind.'

"'Of the faith?' Miriam asked further. And the maiden faltered and said, 'Nay, not yet—but worthy and kindly.'

"But the prophetess bade the men at the poles to continue, saying: 'Shall we cheat Jehovah in his intent and rescue an oppressor?'

"But the maiden clung about the knees of Miriam and prayed to her, while the prophetess said, 'Nay, nay' and 'Peace,' and sought to soothe her, and when at that moment some one called out of the darkness, she put her hand over the maiden's mouth and would not let her answer. And the barge went swiftly away. Then the maiden fell on her face, like one dead, and she will not be comforted."

Joshua drew himself into securer, position on the camel and shook its harness.

"Love!" he said with a frown. "The evilest tie and the strongest between Israel and Mizraim!"

"Nay," Caleb protested, "thou hast loved."

"A daughter of Israel," the warrior answered bluntly. "Dost thou follow me into Goshen, Caleb?"

"Nay, we go on to Tanis, where we shall join Moses and Aaron who lie there awaiting the Pharaoh's summons."

"The parting shall not be long between thee and me, then. Peace to thee, Caleb. To Miriam, greeting and peace."

The warrior urged his camel and, rounding the stela-guarding soldier who had stood within ear-shot of the narrative, he was gone in a long undulating swing up the road that led to Pa-Ramesu.

Caleb gazed after him until he was only a tall shape like the stroke of a pen in the distance. Then the mild Israelite looked longingly at the Egyptian, and finally returned to the litters. These in a moment were shouldered by the bearers and moved out up the road toward Tanis. Caleb walked before them, dotting every other footprint with the point of his staff. He sighed gustily and sank his bearded chin on his breast.

The soldier turned his head as soon as the attendant had passed and gazed at the litters.

The Hebrew bearers of the foremost were four in number, dressed in the garb of serving-men to noble Israel. The hangings of blue linen had been thrust aside and within was the semi-recumbent figure of a woman. One knee was drawn up, the hands clasped behind the head, but the majesty of the august countenance belied the youth of the posture. The eyes of the woman met those of the Egyptian and lighted with recognition. She lowered her arms and crossed the left to the shoulder of the right. It was the old attitude of deference from Israel to Atsu. A dusky red dyed the man's cheeks and he touched his knee in response.

The litter of Miriam passed.

The next was a light frame of jungle bamboo, borne by a pair of young men. Its sides were latticed, with the exception of two small window-like openings on either side. These were hung with white linen, but the drapings had been put aside to admit the morning air.

The soldier looked and the shock of recognition drew him a pace away from the stela.

The head of a young girl, partly turned from him, was framed in the small window. The wimple had been thrown back and a single tress of golden hair had escaped across the forehead. The countenance was unhappy, but beautiful for all its misery. The lids were heavy, as if weighted down with sorrow; the cheeks were pallid, the lips colorless and pathetically drooped. A white hand, resting on the slight frame of the small opening, was tightly clenched.

The picture was one of weary despair.

The soldier, blanched and shaken, took a step forward as if to speak, but some realization brought him back to rigid attention against the stela.

The light litter passed on.

The regular tread of the men grew fainter and fainter and silence settled again about the well.

The soldier stood erect, gray-faced and immovable, his eyes fixed, his teeth set, his hand gripping the pike, till the insects, reassured, began to chirr close about him. Then his lids quivered; the pike leaned in his grasp; his jaw relaxed, weakly. He shifted his position and frowned, flung up his head and resumed his vigil. The moments went on and yet he retained his tense posture. The hour passed and with it his physical endurance.

Then his emotion gathered all its forces, all the compelling sensations of disappointment, rebuff, heart-hurt, jealousy, hopelessness, and stormed his soul. He turned about and, stretching his arms across the top of the stela, hid his face and surrendered.

Around him was the unbroken circle of the earth and above the blue desert of sky, solitary, soundless. And the union of earth and heaven, like a mundane and spiritual collusion, lay between him and the little litter.

The beat of a horse's hoofs in the distance roused him after a long time, and hastily turning his back toward the new-comer, he resumed at once his soldierly attitude.

The traveler bore down on him from the west and reined his horse at the intersection of the two roads. He looked up the straight highway toward Pa-Ramesu, then turned in the saddle and gazed toward Tanis. His indecision was not a wayfarer's casual hesitancy in the choice of roads. By the anxiety written on his face, life, fortune or love might be at stake upon the correct selection of route. Once or twice he looked at the soldier, but showed no inclination to ask advice, even had the man-at-arms turned his way.

It was one of fate's opportunities to be gracious. Here was Kenkenes seeking for the maiden whom he and the soldier loved, and it lay in the power of the unelect to direct the fortunate. But Kenkenes did not know the warrior, and Atsu had no desire to turn his unhappy face to the new-comer. The young man grew more and more troubled, his indecision more marked. Suddenly he dropped the reins, and without guiding the horse, urged the animal forward.

Kenkenes was relying on chance for direction.

Confused and unready the horse awaited the intelligent touch on the bridle. It did not come. He flung up his head and smelt the wind. Nervously he stamped and trod in one place, breathing loudly in protest.

The low voice of his rider continued to urge him. Perhaps the wind from Goshen brought the smell of unblighted pastures. Whatever the reason, the horse turned, with uncertainty in his step and took the road eastward to Pa-Ramesu.

Having chosen, he went confidently, and as he was not halted and was young and swift, he increased his pace to a long run.

Meanwhile far to the north the little litter was borne toward Tanis. And Atsu, the warrior, did not move his eyes from the distant point where it had disappeared over the horizon.



CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE TRAITORS

The morning of the second day after the lifting of the darkness lay golden over Egypt, blue-shadowed before the houses and trees to the west and shimmering and illusory toward the east. A slow-moving, fragmentary cloud had gathered in the zenith just after dawn and for many minutes over the northern part of Goshen there had been a perpendicular downpour of illuminated rain. Now the sky was as clear and blue as a sapphire and the little wind was burdened with odorous scents from the clean-washed pastures of Israel.

Seti had crossed the border into Goshen at daybreak and was now well into the grazing-lands, yet scintillating with the rain. The hoofs of his fat little horse were patched with wet sand of the roadway and there was no dust on the prince's modest raiment. Behind the youth plodded two heavy-headed, limp-eared sumpter-mules, driven by a big-boned black.

Seti was not far from his destination, an obscure village of image-makers directly south of Tanis and situated on the northern border of Goshen. The same region that furnished clay to Israel for Egypt's bricks afforded material for terra-cotta statuettes.

Ahead of him were fields with clouds of sheep upon the uplands and cattle standing under the shade of dom-palms. Here and there hovels with thatches no higher than a man's head, or low tents, dark with long use, and lifted at one side, stood in a setting of green. About them were orderly and productive gardens. Nowhere was any sign of the desolation that prevailed over Egypt.

Seti looked upon the beautiful prosperity of Goshen at first with the natural delight loveliness inspires, and then with as much savage resentment as his young soul could feel. Belting this garden and stretching for seven hundred miles to the south, was Egypt, desolate, barren and comatose. The God of the Hebrews had avenged them fearfully.

"They had provocation," he muttered to himself; "but they have overdone their vengeance."

A figure appeared on the road over the comb of a slight ridge, and Seti regarded the wayfarer with interest.

He was a Hebrew. His draperies were loose, voluminous, heavily fringed, and of such silky texture of linen that they flowed in the light wind. His head was covered with a wide kerchief, which was bound with a cord, and hid the forehead.

He was of good stature and upright, but his drapings were so ample that the structure of his frame was not discernible. His eyes were black, bright and young in their alertness, but the beard that rippled over his breast to his girdle was as white as the foam of the Middle Sea.

The Hebrew walked in the grass by the roadside and came on, his face expectant. At sight of the prince he stepped into the roadway. Seti drew up.

"Thou art Seti-Meneptah?" the ancient wayfarer asked.

"Even so," the prince answered.

The Hebrew put back his kerchief and stood uncovered.

"Dost thou know me, my son?" he asked.

"Thou art that Aaron, of the able tongue, brother to Mesu. Camest thou forth to meet me?"

The Hebrew readjusted the kerchief.

"Thou hast said."

"Wast thou, then, so impatient? Where is thy brother?"

"Nay. The village of image-makers is not safe. Moses hath departed for Zoan." [1]

"And named thee in his stead. But his mission to my father's capital bodes no good. He might have stayed until I could have persuaded him into friendship."

"Not with all thy gold!" said Aaron gravely.

"Nay, I had not meant that," Seti rejoined with some resentment. "If Egypt's plight can not win mercy from him by its own piteousness, the treasure I bring is not enough."

The Hebrew waved his hand as if to dismiss the subject.

"Let us not dispute so old a quarrel," he said. "We have a new sorrow, thou and I."

"Of Mesu's sending?"

"Nay, of thine own misplaced trust."

"What!" the prince exclaimed. "Have I clothed thy kinsman with more grace than he owns?"

"Thou hast put faith in thine enemy. A woman hath deceived thee."

"What dost thou tell me?" Seti cried, leaping to the ground and angrily confronting Aaron.

"A truth," the Hebrew answered calmly. "The Princess Ta-user is a fugitive charged with treason."

Seti turned cold and smote his forehead. "Undone through me!" he groaned.

"Not so, my son. Thou art undone through her. She betrayed thee."

Seti turned upon him with a fierce movement.

"Peace!" the Hebrew interrupted the furious speech on the prince's lips. "I bear thee no malice."

"I will give ear to no tales against the princess," Seti avowed with ire.

"Thy blind trust hath already wrought havoc with thee. Let it not bring heavy punishment upon thy head. Thou hast dealt kindly with me, and I am beholden to thee. Give me leave to discharge my debt."

The prince looked stubbornly at Aaron for a moment, but the doubt that had begun to assert itself in his mind clamored for proof or refutation.

"Say on," he said.

"The story is long," the Hebrew explained mildly, "and the sun is ardent. There are friends in yonder house. Let us ask the shelter of their roof for an hour."

Gathering his robes about him with peculiar grace, he went through the grass toward a low, capacious tent, pitched by a trickling branch of the great canal. Seti followed moodily.

A black-haired Israelitish woman, sitting on the earth before the lifted side of the tent, arose, and reverently kissed the hem of Aaron's robes. Her dark-eyed brood appeared at various angles of the tent, and at a sign and a word from the woman they did obeisance and hailed the ancient visitor in soft Hebrew.

After a short colloquy between Aaron and the woman of Israel, the children were dismissed to play in the fields and the woman carried the bowl and basket of lentils out of ear-shot of her house.

"Let us enter," Aaron said, with an inclination of his head toward Seti. He stooped and preceded the young man into the home of the Hebrew.

The prince saw the black dispose himself on the grass outside, with his eyes upon the sumpter-mule.

Aaron sat upon one of the rugs, and Seti, following his example, took another.

"Say on," the prince urged.

The Hebrew began at once.

"What I tell thee, O my son, will soon be talked abroad over the land. But if thou hast a doubt in thy heart, and art like to question my truth-speaking, there are witnesses I may summon, such as no wise man will deny. And these be Jambres, and the twelve priests of the cities of the north, and the innkeeper at Pithom, also the governor over the treasure-city, his soldiers, and others, who know the secret by now.

"I will give thee the tale now, and the proof thereafter, if thou believest me not.

"Last night, I lay under the tent of a son of Israel, at Pithom. When I arose, two hours before dawn, horsemen began to gallop through the city toward the south. The inhabitants were aroused; there was much running to and fro, and the inn was full of lights.

"We approached, and when the tumult had died and the Egyptians were so full of the tidings that they were glad to relieve themselves even to an Israelite, I asked and learned this story. Many times afterward, on my way hither, I heard it from the lips of men whom I passed, so I am not deceived.

"Seven days agone, under an evil star, a veiled woman came to the temple of Bast, in the village of image-makers, and made offerings to the idol. She remained in the shrine, praying, for a time without reason, as though she pretended to worship, until a certain space should elapse. At the end of the hour in which she came, another woman, closely covered, her mouth hidden, entered and knelt near her. In a little they arose and went forth together, and Jambres, who is priest at the little temple, grown suspicious by reason of their behavior, looked after them. The wind swayed the garments of the second stranger, and showed the foot and ankle of a man. Filled with wonderment, Jambres laid aside his priest's robes and garbing himself like a wayfarer, followed. They left the village, going east where the road leadeth along the canal, which is hidden by the sprouts of young trees. Farther up the way were servitors who waited for the man and woman, but the two stepped out of ear-shot, and sat by the road to talk.

"Jambres, hidden in the fringe of bushes behind, heard them.

"They laid a snare. And thou, O Prince, wast to be trapped therein."

Seti's eyes were veiled and his face showed a heightening of color.

"Thou wast to come to the temple in the village of image-makers with treasure to give into the hands of Moses. Thy message to my brother was to be delivered by the Princess Ta-user. She delivered it not. The word she should have brought came to Moses by a son of Belial, a godless Hebrew, sent by Jambres, for the brotherhood of priests would have had Moses come to the temple, for their own ends. But the servants of the Lord God of Israel are keen-eyed and they know a jackal from a hare. However, these matters I did not hear from the people. Such secret things are not discussed upon the streets. All that I heard in Pithom may be talked openly over Egypt.

"The man and the woman laid their plans, and they were these: Last night, the man and his servants were to lie at Pithom, and to-day they were to meet thee at the temple of Bast, overpower thee, take thy treasure and, with the woman, fly to some secure place. With the treasure they were to hire them soldiers—mercenaries, and take arms against the king, thy father."

The speaker paused again. Seti's breast labored and his gaze was fixed upon the Hebrew.

"The ire of Jambres was kindled against the plotters, and he called an assembly of the priests within short distances from the village of image-makers and laid his discoveries before them. They pledged themselves to proceed to Pithom last night, which was the night they came together in council, and take the traitors. But one among their number, a young priest who knew the woman, played them false, entered the city before his fellows and warned the plotters. They had fled, with the priests in pursuit.

"My son, the man was Siptah, son of Amon-meses; the woman, the Princess Ta-user."

The prince's face took on an insane beauty. In each cheek was a scarlet stain—his lips smiled without parting and his eyes glittered. He did not question the Hebrew's story. Something within him corroborated every word. He sprang to his feet and with an unnatural laugh flung his hand above his head.

"Now, by Horus," he cried, "I must get back to Tanis. I would ask the pardon of Rameses!"

Aaron arose and laid detaining hands upon him.

"I did not tell thee this, that I might be a bearer of evil tidings. I came forth to meet thee, that thou mayest save thyself. Far be it from me to bring misfortune upon Israel's one friend in Egypt's high places. Return to Tanis with all speed and take the treasure with thee. Then only will the intent rest against thee—"

"Not so," Seti interrupted harshly. "Wilt thou rob me of the one balm to my humiliation? Wilt thou defeat me also in the one good deed I would do? Take thou the treasure and be glad that it fell not into the hands of the wanton. Let me depart."

But Aaron was planted in his way.

"Knowest thou not what they will do with thee? Thou wouldst have given aid to the enemy of Egypt. Thou knowest the penalty. Sooner would Israel make it a garment of sackcloth and feed upon alms, than yield thee up to thine enemies for thy gold's sake—"

But Seti would not hear him. "I care not what they do with me," he said. "The gods grant they lay upon me the extreme weight of the law. I go back to Tanis as one returneth to his beloved."

He shook off the Israelite's hands and ran into the open. There, he ordered the black to give the treasure over to the Hebrew, and flinging himself upon his horse, galloped furiously toward Tanis.

Of the remainder of the day Seti had little memory. Once or twice as he proceeded headlong through hamlets, he caught from the lips of natives a denunciation of Siptah, a vicious epithet applied to Ta-user, or, like a fresh thrust in an old wound, a pitying groan for himself. His shame had preceded him on fleet wings. He hoped he might as swiftly run his sentence down.

None knew him in the roadways and the towns did not expect him. The pickets on the outer wall of Tanis halted him, but when they beheld his face, their pikes fell and with hands on knees, they bade him pass. The palace sentries started and gave him room.

He was running, sobbing, through the dark and capacious corridors of the palace and no man had stayed him yet. Were they to make his shame more poignant by pitying him and punishing him not at all? He flung himself through the doors of the council chamber and halted.

The great hall was crowded and full of excitement. Meneptah had summoned the court to the royal presence.

In his loft above the throng stood the king, purple with rage. The queen, in her place at his side, was staying his outstretched hand. Below at his right stood Rameses, the kingliest presence that ever graced a royal sitting. At the left of Meneptah, was Har-hat, complacent and serene.

Out in the center of a generous space stood Moses. The great Hebrew was alone and isolated, but his personality was such that a throng could not have obscured him.

In his massive physique was an insistent suggestion of immovability and superhuman strength; in the shape of his imperial head, there was illimitable capacity; in his face, the image of a nature commanding the entire range of feeling, from the finest to the fiercest. There was nothing of the occult in his atmosphere. His intense human force would have commanded, though Egypt had not known him as the emissary of God.

As it was, when he moved the assembly swayed back as if blown by a wind. A motion of his hand sent a nervous start over the hall. The nearest courtiers seemed prepared to crouch. Meneptah did not win a glance from his court. Every eye, wide and expectant, was fixed upon the Israelite.

The pale and troubled queen strove in vain. Meneptah thrust her aside and shaking his clenched hand at the solitary figure before him, ended the audience in a voice violent with fury.

"Get thee from me! Take heed to thyself; see my face no more. For in that day thou seest my face, thou shalt die!"

After the speech, the silence fell, deepened, grew ominous. None breathed, and the overwrought nerves of the court reached the limit of endurance.

Then Moses answered. His tones were quiet, his voice full of a calm more terrifying than an outburst had been.

"Thou hast spoken well," he said. "I will see thy face no more."

Another breathless silence and he turned, the courtiers shrinking from his way, and passed out of the hall.

At the doors, his eyes fell upon Seti. He made no sign of surprise. Indeed his glance seemed to indicate that he expected the prince. He raised his hand and extended it for a moment over the boy's head, and went forth.

The strength went from Seti's limbs, the passion from his brain, and when Rameses with grim purpose in his face beckoned him, he obeyed meekly and prostrated himself before the angry king.



[1] Zoan—The Hebrew name for Tanis.



CHAPTER XXXIX

BEFORE EGYPT'S THRONE

The distance by highway between Memphis and Tanis was eighty miles, a little more than two days' journey by horseback.

Masanath had required two weeks to accomplish that distance. She refused to travel except in the cool of the morning and of the afternoon; if she felt the fatigue of an hour's journey, she rested a day at the next town; she consulted astrologers, and moved forward only under propitious signs; she insisted on following the Nile until she was opposite Tanis, instead of taking the highway at On and continuing across the Delta.

The most of her following walked, and she proceeded at the pace of her plodding servants.

She spoke of her freedom as though she went to meet doom; she gazed on the sorry fields and pastures of Egypt as though the four walls of a prison were soon to shut out heaven and earth from her eyes.

She was now within ten miles of Tanis, fourteen days after her departure from Memphis.

Four solemn Ethiopians bore her litter upon their shoulders, and another waved a fan of black ostrich plumes over her. The litter was of glittering ebony, hung with purple, tasseled with gold. At her right, was Unas; at her left, Nari. Behind her were dusky attendants and sooty sumpter-mules.

Her robes were white, and very fine, but there was no henna on her nails, nor kohl beneath her lids, nor jewels in her hair. So she would prove that, though she was a coming queen, she was not glad of it. Hers was not the spirit that hides its trouble and enamels the exterior with false flushes and smiles. She enveloped herself in her feelings. She tinctured her voice with them; she made her eyes languid with them; and the touch of her hand, the curve of her lips and the droop of her head were eloquent of them.

By this time, she had despaired. There was yet an opportunity to spend another day covering the remaining ten miles, but she would loiter no longer. She was tired, of a truth.

It was near sunset when a company of royal guards, under Menes, rode up from the north.

The captain flung himself from his horse and hurried to Masanath's litter.

"Holy Isis! Lady Masanath," he exclaimed; "where in all Egypt hast thou hidden thyself these fourteen days? The whole army of the north hath been searching after thee, and Rameses hath raved like a madman since that day long past on which thou shouldst have arrived in Tanis."

"I have been on the way," she answered loftily. "The haste of the prince is unseemly. I would not fatigue myself nor court disaster by incautiousness, these perilous days."

Menes bowed. "I am reproved, and contrite. I forgot that I spoke with my queen. But I am most grateful that thou didst permit me to find thee, for Rameses sent me forth an hour since, with the hard alternative of fetching thee to him or losing my head. But that he was sure of my success is proved by the litter he sent between two horses for thee. Wilt thou leave this and proceed in the other?"

Masanath answered by extending her hand to him. Three of the soldiers laid their cloaks on the earth for her feet; six others let down the litter and Menes assisted her into the sumptuous conveyance Rameses had sent.

Another soldier, after rapid and low-spoken instructions from the captain, whirled his horse about, saluted and took the road toward Tanis at a gallop.

The six shouldered the litter of the crown princess-to-be, Menes mounted his horse and rode beside her; Unas, her Memphian train, and the riderless horses were left to bring up the rear, and Masanath continued to the capital.

"Perchance, thou hast been famished these fourteen days in the matter of court-gossip," the captain said. "Wherefore I am come as thy informant with such news as thou shouldst know. For, being ignorant of the infelicities in the household of the king, it may be that thou wouldst ask after the little prince, Seti, and wherefore the queen appears no more at the side of the Pharaoh, nor speaks with thy lord nor sees thy noble father; and furthermore, where Ta-user hath taken herself and other things which would embarrass thee to hear answered openly."

Masanath roused herself and prepared to listen. Serious words from the lips of the light-hearted captain were not common, and when he spoke in that manner it was time to take heed.

"I had heard of the little prince's misfortune and of the treason of Ta-user and her party, and the placing of a price upon her head; but nothing more hath come to mine ears. Is there more, of a truth?"

"Remember, I pray thee," the captain replied, riding near to her, "that I bring thee this for thine own sake—not for the love of tale-bearing. On the counsel of Rameses, this day the Pharaoh sentenced Seti to banishment for a year to the mines of Libya—"

"To the mines!" Masanath cried in horror.

"Not as a laborer. Nay, the sentence was not so harsh. But as a scribe to the governor over them."

"It matters little!" she declared indignantly. "The boy-prince—the poor, misguided young brother sent to a year of banishment—a lifelong humiliation! Libya, the death-country! Now, was anything more brutal? Nay, it is like Rameses!"

"Aye," the captain replied quickly, leaning over her with a cautioning motion of his hand. "Aye, and it is like thee to say it. But hear me yet further. The queen and the Son of Ptah have quarreled, violently, over Seti," he continued in a low tone. "The little prince merited thy father's disfavor, because Seti espoused the cause of Ta-user in thy place, though he loves thee, and for that—we can find no other reason—the noble Har-hat also urged the king into the harsh sentence of the little prince. For this the queen hath publicly turned her back upon the crown prince and the fan-bearer, and the atmosphere of the palace is most unhappy."

He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Hotep championed Seti,—for the young sister's sake, it would appear,—but to me it seemeth that the scribe hath lost his wits."

"It would seem that he courteth a sentence to the mines likewise, and he needs but to go on as he hath begun to succeed most thoroughly. And it behooveth his friends to prevent him."

He took Masanath's hand and, leaning from the saddle, whispered:

"Ye are under the same roof—thou and Hotep. Avoid him as though he were a pestilence."

He straightened himself and drew his horse away from her so that she could not answer.

The captain's meaning, though obscure to any other that might have heard him, was very clear to Masanath. Har-hat was still holding a threat of Hotep's undoing over his daughter's head, lest, at the last moment, she rebel against her marriage. She trembled, realizing how desperately she was weighted with the safety of the scribe. Her fear for him brought the first feeling of willingness to wed with Rameses that she had ever experienced. Distasteful as marriage was to her, it was a species of sacrifice to be catalogued with the many self-abnegations of which womanhood is capable when the welfare of the beloved is at stake.

She sank back in the shadows of her litter, covered her face with her hands and shuddered because of the imminence of her trial.

So they journeyed on, till at last Masanath fell asleep—not from indifference, for her fears exhausted her—but because her mind still retained babyhood's way of comforting itself when too roughly beset.

She was aroused in the middle of the first watch by the passage of her litter between bewildering stretches of lights. She was within the palace. The soldiers that bore her were tramping over a Damascene carpet, and between long lines of groveling attendants, through an atmosphere of overwhelming perfume. The messenger had been swift and the court had had time to prepare to greet the coming crown princess with propriety.

After the first spasm of terror, Masanath set her teeth and prepared to endure. She was borne to the doors of the throne-room and two nobles gorgeously habited set the carved steps beside the litter for her feet.

Without hesitation she descended.

The great hall was ablaze with light and lined with courtiers. The Pharaoh, with the queen by his side again, was in his place under the canopy.

How tiny the little bride seemed to those gathered to greet her! In that vast chamber, with its remote ceiling, its majestic pillars, its distances and sonorous echoes, her littleness was pathetically accentuated.

Outside the shelter of her litter, she felt stripped of all protection. She dared not look at the ranks of courtiers, lest her gaze fall on the fair face of the royal scribe. She reminded Isis of her threat and moved into the open space, which extended down the center of the hall.

Har-hat, glittering with gems, and rustling in snow-white robes, approached with triumph in his face to embrace her. But within three steps he paused as suddenly as though he had been commanded. Masanath had not spoken, but her pretty chin had risen, her mouth curved haughtily, and the gaze she fixed upon him from under her lashes was cold and forbidding.

She extended the tips of her fingers to him. The action clamored its meaning. Not in the face of that assembly dared he disregard it, but his black eyes hardened and flashed threateningly. The warning given, he bent his knee and kissed the proffered hand. He had become the subject of his daughter.

She suffered him to lead her to the royal dais where she knelt. The queen descended, raised her and led her to the throne. Meneptah met them, kissed Masanath's forehead, and blessed her. The queen embraced her and returned to her place beside the Pharaoh.

Masanath turned to the right of the royal dais and faced the prince. Thus far, her greetings had not been hard. Now was the supreme test. Har-hat conducted her within a few paces of the prince and stepped aside. What followed was to prove Masanath's willingness.

Rameses stood in the center of a slightly raised platform, which was carpeted with gold-edged purple. Behind him was his great chair. But for the badge of princehood, the fringed ribbon dependent from a gem-crusted annulet over each temple, his habiliments were the same as the Pharaoh's.

Masanath gave him a single comprehensive glance. She was to wed against her will, but she noted philosophically that she was to wed with no puppet, but a kingly king. With all that, admitting herself a peer to this man, it wrenched her sorely to acknowledge subserviency to him.

Hope dead—the hour of her trial at hand—nothing was left to uphold her but the memory of the good she might do for Hotep. Her face fell and she approached the prince with slow steps. Within three paces of the platform she paused and sank to her knees.

It was done. She had acknowledged the betrothal and knelt to her lord. Somewhere in that assembly Hotep had seen it, and she wondered numbly if he understood why she had submitted; wondered if she had saved him; wondered if she could endure for the long life they must spend under the same roof; wondered if the gods would take pity on her and kill her very soon.

By this time, Rameses had raised her. He lifted the badge of princehood from his forehead, shortened the fillet from which it hung, so that it would fit her small head and set it on her brow.

The great palace shook with the acclaim of the courtiers. Organ-throated trumpets were blown; the clang of crossed arms, and sound of beaten shields arose from all parts of the king's house; all the ancients' manifestations of joy were made,—and the pair that had brought it forth looked upon each other.

Masanath was trembling, and filled with a great desire to cry out. All this was manifest on her small, white face. The light had died in the prince's eyes, the exultation was gone from his countenance. He knew what thoughts were uppermost in the mind of Masanath, and the tyrant had spoken truly to her long ago, when he said his heart might be hurt. His brow contracted with an expression of actual pain and he turned with a fierce movement as if to command the rejoicings to be still. But a thought deterred him and taking Masanath's hand he led her down the hall through the bending ranks of purple-wearing Egyptians to the great portals of the hall. There, he gave her into the hands of a troop of court-ladies, lithe as leopards and gorgeous as butterflies, who led her with many sinuous obeisances to her apartments. She had not far to go. The suite given over to the new crown princess was within the wing of the palace in which the royal family lived. Masanath noted with a little trepidation that her door was very near to the portals over which was the winged sun, carven and portentous. Here were the chambers of her lord, the heir.

Within her own apartments, she was attended multitudinously. Ladies-in-waiting bent at her elbow; soft-fingered daughters of nobility habited her in purple-edged robes; flitting apparitions, in a distant chamber, glimpsed through a vista, laid a table of viands for her, to which she was led with many soft flatteries; her every wish was anticipated; all her trepidation conspicuously overlooked; her rank religiously observed in all speech and behavior. And of all her retinue, she was the least complacent.

After her sumptuous meal, she was informed that a member of her private train had come to Tanis from Memphis, ten days agone, in a state of great concern and had awaited all that time in the palace till she should arrive. Now that she had come, the servitor insisted on seeing the princess and would not be denied. Troubled and wondering, Masanath ordered that he be brought. In a few minutes, Pepi stood before her. The taciturn servant was visibly frightened.