"Pepi!" she cried. "What brings thee here?"

"I have lost the Israelite," he faltered.

"Thou hast lost Rachel!"

"Hear me, my Lady, I pray thee. Thou knowest we were to stop at the Marsh of the Discontented Soul to leave a writing on the tomb for the son of Mentu. So we did. The Israelite bade me stand away from the shore lest we be seen. I put out into midstream and while mine eyes were attracted for a space toward the other shore, a boat drew up at the Marsh. I started to return, but before I could reach the place, the Israelite—the man—they were in—each other's arms."

Masanath clasped her hands happily, but the servant went on, in haste. "It was the son of Mentu, I know, my Lady. He was wondrous tall, and the Israelite was glad to see him—"

"O, of a surety it was Kenkenes," Masanath interrupted eagerly.

"Nay, but hear me, my Lady," the serving-man protested, his distress evident in his voice. "I moved away and turned my back, for I knew they had no need of me. Once, twice, I looked and still they talked together. But, alas! the third time I looked, it was because I heard sounds of combat, and I saw that the son of Mentu and several men were fighting. One, whom by his fat figure I took to be Unas, was pursuing the Israelite. I would have returned to help her, but the dreadful night overtook me before I could reach her—and as thou knowest,—none moved thereafter.

"When the darkness lifted, I was off the wharves at On, where my boat had drifted. I halted only long enough to feed, for I was famished, and with all haste I returned to the Marsh. None was there. I went to the house in Memphis, but it was dark and closed. Next I visited the home of Mentu and asked if Rachel were there, but the old housekeeper had never heard of such a maiden. But when I asked if the young master had returned, she asked me where I had been that I had not heard he was dead. And having said, she shut the door in my face. I think he was within, and she would not answer me 'aye' or 'nay,' but I know that she told the truth concerning the Israelite."

Masanath, who had stood, the picture of dismay and apprehension during the last part of the recital, seized his arm.

"Hast thou had an eye to the master?" she demanded in a fierce whisper.

"Aye," he answered quickly. "I have followed him like a shadow, and this I know. Nak and Hebset were here when I came, but they went that same night, each in a different direction, to search further for her. They returned to-night, but I know not whether they brought one with them."

Masanath clasped her hands and thought for a moment, a mental struggle evidenced on her little face by the rapid fluctuations of color.

"Get thee down to the kitchens, Pepi," she said presently, "and if Nari hath come, send her up to me. Give thyself comfort and remain in the palace. It may be that I shall need thee."

She surveyed herself with a swift glance in a plate of polished silver which was her mirror, and then, darting out of her door, ran down the corridor as though she would outstrip repentance before it overtook her.

The flight was not long, but she had lost her composure before she started. Outside her doors, she trembled as if unprotected. Soldiers of the royal guard paced along the hall before her chambers. The lamps that burned there were of gold; the drapings were of purple wrought with the royal symbols; the asp supported the censers; the head of Athor surmounted the columns. She was a dweller of the royal house. Far, far away from her were the unimperial quarters in which, once, she would have lived. There was her father—there was Hotep—

She came upon him whom she sought. He was on the point of entering his apartments. He paused with his hands on the curtains and waited for her.

"A word with thee, my Lord," she panted, chiefly from trepidation.

"I have come to expect no more than a word from thee," he said.

The answer would have sent her away in dudgeon, under any other circumstances, but her pride could not stand in the way of this very pressing duty.

"A boon," she said, choking back her resentment.

"A boon! Thou wouldst ask a boon of me! Nay, I will not promise, for it may be thou comest to ask thy freedom, and that I will not grant for spleen."

Still she curbed herself. "Nay, O Prince; I am come to ask naught of thee which—a wife—may not justly ask of—her—lord."

He left the curtain and came close to her. "Had the words come smoothly over thy lips, they would have meant any wife—any husband. But thy very faltering names thee and me. What is the boon that thou mayest justly ask of me?"

"My father—."

"Hold! There, too, I make a restriction. Already have I suffered thy father sufficiently."

Tears leaped into her insulted eyes, and in the bright light, shining from a lamp above her head, her emotion was very apparent.

"Thou hast begun well in thy siege of my heart, Rameses," she said. "I am like to love thee, if thou dost woo me with affronts!"

"I am as like to win thee with rough words as I am with soft speeches. I had thought thee above pretense, Masanath."

"I pretend not," she cried, stamping her foot. "And if thou wouldst know how I esteem thee, I can tell thee most truthfully."

He laughed and caught her hands. "Nay, save thy judgment. Thou hast a long life with me before thee, and the minds of women can change in the blink of an eye. Furthermore, I love thee none the less because thou art so untamed. Thou art the world I would subdue. So thou dost not give allegiance to another conqueror, I shall not grieve over thy rebellion. Is there another?" he asked.

"I would liefer wed with well-nigh any other man in Egypt than with thee, Rameses," she replied deliberately.

The declaration swept him off his feet.

"Gods! but thou dost hate me," he cried. Panic possessed her for a moment, remembering Hotep, but it was too late. She returned the prince's gaze without wavering, though her hands shook pitifully. After what seemed to her an interminable time, he spoke again.

"Perchance I am unwise in taking thee," he said. "Perchance I but give thee opportunity to spit me on a dagger in my sleep."

The tears brimmed over her lashes this time.

"Thou dost slander me!" she exclaimed passionately.

"Then I do not understand thee, Masanath," he asserted.

"Of a surety," she declared, withdrawing a hand that she might dry the evidences of her indignation from her cheeks. "Take the example home to thyself! Thou hast been loved in thy time, and if ever there was awakened any feeling in thy heart in response it was repugnance. What if one of these women had it in her power to take thee against thy will? By this time thou hadst been dead of thy frantic hate of her, if self-murder had not been done!"

"Even so," he answered with a short laugh; "but I will not set thee free, Masanath, if thou didst convict me a monster in mine own eyes. If thou art good thou wilt love me or do thy duty by me. If thou art base, I have wedded mine own deserts."

He took the hand she had withdrawn and prepared to go on, but she interposed.

"Not yet have I asked my boon."

"I am no longer in debt to thy father."

"I ask no favor for my father at thy hands. Rather am I come to crave a boon for myself."

"Speak."

"My father asked an Israelite maiden at the hands of the Pharaoh a year agone, and she was beloved by my friend and thine. She fled from my father and was hidden by the man she loved—"

"Aye, I know the story. Hotep brought it to mine ears months ago. The man was Kenkenes, and thy father overtook him and threw him into prison in Tape. What more?"

"The gods keep me in my love for thee, O my father! for thou dost strain it most heavily," Masanath thought. After an unhappy silence she went on.

"Thou hast given me news. I know little of the tale save that the day the darkness fell Kenkenes met his love on the eastern shore of the Nile opposite Memphis, and there my father's servants came upon them and fought with him for the possession of the Israelite. The Israelite is gone, and my father's servants are still seeking for her, and I would not have her taken."

"Thou art a queen. What is she, a slave, to thee?"

"A sister, my comforter, my one friend!"

"Thou canst find sisters and comforters and friends among high-born women of Egypt. I had laid Kenkenes' folly concerning this Israelite to the moonshine genius in him. But the slave is a sorceress, for the madness touches whosoever looks upon her. Behold her worshipers—first, thy father, Kenkenes, Hotep and thyself, and the gods know whom else. She would better be curbed before she bewitches Egypt."

"It is her goodness and her grace that win, Rameses. If that be sorcery, let it prevail the world over. Give her freedom and save her spotlessness."

"Har-hat shall not take her, I promise thee. I shall send her back to her place in the brick-fields."

Masanath recoiled in horror. "To the brick-fields!" she cried. "Rachel to the brick-fields!"

"I have said. Her Israelitish spotlessness will be secure there, and the reduction of her charms will be the saving of Kenkenes."

"Alas! what have I done?" she cried. "I am as fit for the brick-fields as Rachel. O, if thou but knew her, Rameses!"

"Nay, it is as well that I do not; she might bewitch me. And seeing that she is born of slaves, how shall she be pampered above her parents? Put the folly from thy mind, Masanath, and trouble me not concerning a single slave. Shall I let one go, seeing that I am holding the body at the sacrifice of Egypt?"

Great was Masanath's distress to make her seize him so beseechingly.

"Turn not away, my Lord," she begged. "See what havoc I have wrought for Rachel when I sought to help her. And behold the honesty of thy boast of love for me. My first boon and thou dost deny it!"

He laughed, and slipping an arm about her, pressed her to him.

"First am I a king—next a lover," he said. "Thy prayer seeketh to come between me and my rule over the Israelites. Ask for something which hath naught to do with my scepter."

"Surely if thou sendest her to the brick-fields Kenkenes will go into slavery with her," she persisted, enduring his clasp in the hope that he might soften.

"Then it were time for the dreamer to be awakened by his prince."

"Thou wilt not come between them!" she exclaimed.

"Nay, no need. Seven days of the lash and the sun of the slave-world will heal Kenkenes."

"Thou shalt see!" Masanath declared, endeavoring to free herself. "And the gods judge thee for thy savage use of maidenhood!"

Again he laughed, and this time he kissed her in spite of her resistance.

"The gods judge me rather for this sweeter use of maidenhood," he said. "Let them continue to prosper me in it and hasten the day of her willingness. Meanwhile," he continued, still holding her, as if he enjoyed the mastery over her, "get thee back to thy sleep and put the thought of slaves out of thy mind. To-morrow thou settest thy feet in the path to the throne; to-morrow there will be ceremonies and prayers and blessings out of number; and to-morrow sunset thou art no longer betrothed but a bride! My bride! Go now, and be proud of me if thou canst not love me!"

He released her and, as he entered his apartments, lifted the curtain and stood for an instant looking back at her.

Masanath saw him through her despairing tears—strong, immovable, terrible—in his youth and his purposes and his capabilities.

Then the curtain fell behind him.

Crushed and stunned with despair and horror, she made her way to her apartments in a mist of tears.

There was no help for the beloved Rachel or for the young lover. All whom she might ask to approach the king in their favor were helpless or prejudiced. Seti was disgraced; the queen, useless; Hotep, already too imminently imperiled; Rameses, Har-hat, against the lovers; and the king—the poor, feeble king, hopelessly beyond any appeal that she might direct to him.

A sorry resolve shaped itself in her mind. To-morrow at dawn she also would put forth searchers, and finding Rachel, send her out of Egypt, and Kenkenes after her.



CHAPTER XL

THE FIRST-BORN

At the door of her apartments Masanath was met by the faithful Nari, who drew her within and showed her triumphantly that the usurping ladies-in-waiting had departed. The unhappy girl was grateful for the change. The relief for her sorrow was its expression, and she dreaded the restraint put upon her by the presence of discerning and unfamiliar eyes.

All desire for sleep had left her. Nari, weary and heavy-headed, begged her to retire, but she would not. So at last the waiting woman, at her mistress' command, lay down and slept.

The apartment consisted of two chambers running the width of the palace. The outer chamber had a window opening on the streets of Tanis, the inner looked into the palace courtyard.

Masanath wrapped a woolen mantle about her and sat at the window overlooking the park.

Without was the wide hollow, walled by the many-galleried stories of the king's house. Below a fountain of running water, issuing from an ibis-bill of bronze, and falling into a pool, purled and splashed and talked on and on to itself.

Above, the mighty constellations were dropping slowly down the west. The wild north wind from the sea strove against her cheek. The gods were too absorbed in great things, the shifting of the heavens, the flight of the wind and the rocking of the waters, to care for her great burden of trouble. Or, indeed, were they not prejudiced against her as all the world was? They had heard every prayer but hers. They had harkened to Rameses when he asked for her at their hands; they had harkened to her father and yielded him power at her sacrifice; they had even pitied Rachel; they had returned her love from Amenti, and yet had not Rachel reviled them? Nay, there was conspiracy laid against her by the Pantheon, and what had she done to deserve it?

In some one of the many windows that looked into the court another dragged at his chestnut locks and execrated gods and men because of their hardness of heart.

So the night wore on to its noon.

Masanath was becoming drowsy in spite of her determination to keep a sleepless vigil until dawn, when she was aroused by a commotion in the vicinity of the palace. There were indoor cries and shouts for help.

"A brawl," she thought. But the noise seemed to emerge into the street, and there came the sound of flying footsteps and frantic knocks upon doors without. The sound seemed to swell and spread abroad, widening and heightening. Wild shrieks and husky broken shouts swept up from all quarters of the town, and the whole air was full of a vast murmur of many voices, calling and wailing, excited, tremulous and full of fear.

Masanath passed into the outer room to the window that looked upon the city.

Every house had a light, which flickered and appeared at this window and that, and the streets were full of flying messengers, who cried out as they ran. Now and then a chariot, drawn at full speed, dashed past, and by the fluttering robes of the occupants Masanath guessed them to be physicians. All Tanis was in uproar, and its alarm possessed her at once.

She turned to awaken Nari, when she heard inside the palace excited words and hurrying feet. Some one ran, barefoot, past her door, calling under his breath upon the gods. At that moment an incisive shriek cut the increasing murmur in the palace and died away in a long shuddering wail of grief.

"Awake, awake, Nari!" Masanath cried, shaking the sleeping woman. "Something has befallen the city. It is in the palace and everywhere."

Meanwhile a chorus of screams smote upon her ears and the wild outcries of men filled the great palace with terrifying clamor.

Masanath, shaking with dread, wrung her hands and wept. Nari, stupid with fear, sat up and listened.

Presently some one came running and beat, with frenzied hands, upon the door.

"Open! Open! In the name of Osiris!" cried a voice which, though it quaked with consternation, Masanath recognized as her father's.

She flew to the door and wrenched it open. Har-hat, half-dressed, stood before it.

"Father, what manner of sending is this?" she cried.

"Death!" he panted. "Come with me!" He caught her arm and ran, dragging her after him down the corridor, half-lighted, but murmurous with sound.

"What is it, father?" she begged as he hurried her on.

"The gods only know. Rameses hath been smitten and is dying, or even now is dead!"

"Rameses!" she breathed in a terrified whisper. "Rameses! And an hour ago I talked with him—so strong, so resolute, so full of life—O Holy Isis!"

"It is a pestilence sent by Mesu. The whole city is afflicted. Ptah shield us!"

The hangings that covered the entrance to each suite of chambers had been thrown aside and the interiors were vacant. But the farther end of the hall was filled with terrified courtiers in all attitudes and degrees of extravagant demonstration of grief. Men and women were fallen here and there on the pavement or supporting themselves by pillar and wall, wailing, tearing their hair, wounding their faces, rending their garments.

All the dwellers of the palace were flocked about the apartments of Rameses. From the entrance into these chambers issued sounds of the wildest nature. Masanath heard and attempted to draw away from the fan-bearer.

"Take me not into that awful place!" she pleaded. "How canst thou force me, my father!"

But Har-hat did not seem to hear and pushed his way, still dragging her through the crush of shaking attendants that crowded into the outer chambers.

The sleeping-room of the heir was the focal spot of violent sorrow.

The royal pair, the king's ministers, the immediate companions of Rameses, the high priest from the Rameside temple to Set at Tanis and a corps of leeches were present. The couch was surrounded.

Seti was not present, for only in the last moment had some one realized that the young prince should be brought. Hotep had gone to conduct him to the chamber.

The queen, inert and lifeless, lay on the floor at the foot of the prince's bed. Most of the physicians bent over her. Her women, chiefly the wives of the ministers, were hysterical and helpless.

But it was Meneptah who froze the hearts of his courtiers with horror.

Because of his obstinacy Egypt had gone down into famine, pestilence and destruction. Without more than ordinary concern he had watched the hand of the scourge pursue it into ruin till what time he should relent, and he had not relented.

But now that dread Hand had entered within the boundaries of his loves and had smitten Rameses, his heir, his idol!

The effect upon him was terrible. The death chamber rang like a torture dungeon. Nechutes and Menes, by united efforts, barely prevented him from doing self-murder. The earnest attempts of the priest to quiet him were totally useless. Nothing could have been more shocking.

The violent scene wrought Masanath's already over-strained nerves to the highest pitch of distress. The blood congealed in her veins and her steps lagged, but Har-hat, for some purpose not apparent to any who looked upon his daughter's anguish, drew her to the very side of the couch. The leeches, who had been vainly seeking for some flicker of life, stepped aside and the eyes of the cowering girl fell on the prince.

Rameses had seen the Hand that smote him.

The look on the frozen features completed the undoing of Masanath's self-control and she collapsed beside the bed, utterly prostrated.

Hotep entered with Seti. The boy prince's face was inflamed with much weeping, and he flung himself upon the cold clay of Rameses, forgetting wholly that the older brother had urged the passage of a harsh sentence upon his young head.

The courtiers, who had stoically witnessed Meneptah's frantic grief, turned now and hid their blinded eyes. Hotep went to the Pharaoh and laid his hand on the monarch's shoulder. The action commanded. Exhausted by his frenzy, Meneptah leaned against his scribe. The cup-bearer and the captain released him and Hotep spoke quietly.

"Seest thou, O my King, the sorrow of thy people? Behold thy young son and pity him. Look upon thy queen and comfort her. If thou, their staff, art broken, who shall bear them up in their sorrow? Break not. Be thou as the strong father of thy great son, so that from the bosom of Osiris he may look upon Egypt and sleep well, seeing that in his loss his kingdom lost not her prop and stay, her king, also."

The scanty manhood of the monarch, thus ably invoked, responded somewhat. He raised himself and permitted Hotep to conduct him to the side of the boy prince. Seti fell down at his father's feet, and Hotep took Meneptah's hand and laid it on the bowed head.

"Thou dost pardon him, O Son of Ptah," the scribe said in the same quiet voice. The king nodded weakly and wept afresh. After the prince had clasped his father's knees and covered the hand with kisses, he obeyed the scribe's sign and went away to his mother's side. Again Hotep, compelling by his low voice, spoke to the king and the assembly listened.

"The gods have not limited the darts of affliction to thee, O Son of Ptah. Rameses journeyed not alone into Amenti. He took a kingdom with him. Behold, the Hebrew hath loosed his direst plague upon Egypt, and by the lips of an Israelite, in the streets, every first-born in thy realm perished in the home of his father this night!"

The entire assembly cried out, and most of them ran sobbing and praying from the chamber. Instantly the outcry and clamor in the palace broke forth again, for the inhabitants knew that the blow which had smitten Rameses had fallen on one of their own.

Meneptah staggered away from Hotep, his frenzy upon him again.

"Send them hither," he cried hoarsely, waving his arms toward a white-faced courtier that had stood his ground. "Send them hither—the Hebrews, Mesu and Aaron! Israel shall depart, before they make me sink the world! For they have sent madness upon me! I condemned my gentle son, I punished those who gave me wise counsel, I have ruined Egypt, I have slain mine heir, and now the blood of the first-born of all my kingdom is upon my head!" His voice rose to a shriek, and Hotep, putting an arm about him, hushed him with gentle authority and signed the courtier to obey.

The physicians lifted the queen and bore her away. Seti stopped at Masanath's side and looked at her with compassion in his eyes. Har-hat came to him.

"Seeing that thou hast won the pardon of thy father, am I not also included in the restoration of good feeling? Have I won thine enmity, my Prince?"

"I hold naught against thee, O Har-hat, but thou hast not been a profitable counselor to my father in these days of his great need." The young prince spoke frankly and returned the comprehending gaze of the fan-bearer. Har-hat's eyes fell on his daughter, and again on the prince. Slow discomfiture overspread his features. Rameses was dead and with him died the fan-bearer's hold upon his position. Seti was arisen in the heir's place, with all the heir's enmity to him. But from Seti he could not purchase security with Masanath.

Hotep supported Meneptah out of the death chamber, for the court paraschites were already hiding in the shadows of the great halls without. The bed-chamber slowly emptied. Har-hat lifted Masanath and followed the last out-going courtier.

Another tumult had arisen in the great corridor, an uproar of another nature that advanced from the entrance hall of the palace. There were cries of supplication, persuasion, urging, that were frantic in their earnestness. The whole palace seemed to be on its knees.

Hotep, with the king, had paused, and several courtiers went before him and looked down the cross corridor. Instantly they fell on their knees, crying out:

"Ye have the leave of the powers of Egypt! Go! Make haste! Take your flocks, all that is yours! Aye, strip us even, if ye will! But let not the sun rise upon you in Egypt! For we be all dead men!"

A murmur ran through the ministers. "The Hebrews!"

They came slowly, side by side, the two brothers. Egyptians in all attitudes of entreaty cumbered their path—Egyptians, born to the purple, rich, proud, powerful, on their faces to enslaved Israel!

Meneptah wrenched himself from Hotep's sustaining arms and, staggering forward, all but on his knees, met them.

"Rise up and get you forth from among my people," he besought them, "both ye and the children of Israel, and go and serve the Lord as ye have said. Also take your flocks and your herds as ye have said, and be gone; and bless me also!"

Great was the fall for a Pharaoh to pray a blessing from the hands of a slave; great was his humility to kneel to them. But there was no triumph, no exultation on the faces of the Hebrews. Aaron, with his bearded chin on his breast, looked down on the head of the shuddering, pleading monarch; but Moses, after sad contemplation of the humbled king, raised his splendid head and gazed with kindling eyes at Har-hat.

Then with the words, "It is well," spoken without animation, he turned and, with his brother, disappeared into the dusk of the long corridor. The expression, the act, the mode of departure seemed to indicate that the Israelites doubted the stability of the king's intent. In a moment, therefore, the courtiers were pursuing the departing brothers, urging and praying with all their former wild insistence.

Har-hat put Masanath on her feet and started to leave her, but she flung her arms about his neck.

"Forgive me, my father," she sobbed. "For my rebellion the gods may absolve me, but I have been unfilial and for that there is no justification. If aught should befall thee in these awful days, how I should reproach myself! Sawest thou not the Hebrew's gaze upon thee? Say thou dost forgive me!"

"Nay, nay," he said hastily; "thou hast not done me to death by thine undutifulness. And the Hebrew fears me. Get back to thy chamber and rest." He kissed her and undid her clinging arms. Going to the king, he put aside Hotep, who was striving to raise the monarch, and lifted Meneptah in his arms.

"Masanath is better now, good Hotep, and I would take my place beside my king."

Without summoning further aid, he half carried the limp monarch up the hall and into the royal bed-chamber.

Weak, shaking, sated with horror and numb with fear, Masanath attempted to return to her apartments, but at the second step she reeled. Hotep saw her. The fan-bearer was not in sight. In an instant the scribe was beside the fainting girl, supporting her, nor did he release her until she was safe in the ministering arms of Nari.

As he was leaving her he commended her most solemnly to the gods.

"Death hath wrenched a scepter from the gods and ruled the world this night," he said. "We may not delude ourselves that we have escaped, my Lady. As sure as there is a first-born in thy father's house and in mine, that one is dead. And think of those others whom we love, the eldest born of other houses! Do thou pray for us, thou perfect spirit. I can not, for there is little reverence for my gods in me this night."

He turned away and disappeared down the corridor.

Within her chamber Masanath knelt and dutifully strove to pray, but her petition resolved itself into a repeated cry for help. In that hour she did not think of the relief to her and to many that the death of Rameses had brought about, for in her heart she counted it sin to be glad of benefit wrought by the death of any man.

Through the fingers across her face she knew that dawn was breaking, but quiet had not settled on the city. Surging murmurs of unanimous sorrow rose and fell as if blown by the chill wind to and fro over Egypt. The nation crouched with her face in the dust. There was no perfunctory sorrow in her abasement. She was bowed down with her own woe, not Meneptah's. Never before had a prince's going-out been attended by such wild grief. There was no comfort in Egypt, and the air was tremulous with mourning from the first cataract to the sea.



CHAPTER XLI

THE ANGEL OF DEATH

Kenkenes had spent two weeks in Goshen in systematic search for Rachel.

The labor had been time-consuming and fruitless.

More than two million Israelites were encamped about Pa-Ramesu, and among this host Kenkenes had searched thoroughly and fearlessly. He was an Egyptian and a noble, and Israel did not make his way easy. But all Judah knew Rachel and loved her, and the first the young man came upon was a quarryman who had known of Rachel's flight from Har-hat and of her protection at the hands of an Egyptian. Therefore when Kenkenes bore witness, by his stature, that he was the protecting Egyptian, and by his testimony concerning the God of Israel, that he was worthy, this friendly son of Judah began to suspect that Rachel would be glad to see the young noble, and he joined Kenkenes in his search. Furthermore, he softened the hearts of the tribe toward the Egyptian and they tolerated him with some assumption of grace.

The other tribes gave him no heed except to glower at him in the camp-ways or to mutter after him when he had passed. Seeing that Judah suffered him, they did not fall on him. Thus the young man was safe. As for the notice Kenkenes took of Israel, it began and ended with his inquiry after Rachel, the daughter of Maai the Compassionate, a son of Judah. His earnestness absorbed him. Otherwise he was but partly conscious of great preparations making in camp, of tremendous excitement, heightening of zeal and vast meetings after nightfall, when he had withdrawn to a far-off meadow to sleep in the grass.

When he had searched throughout the length and breadth of Israel and found Rachel not, he led his horse from the distant meadow, where he had been pastured, and turned his head toward Tanis.

While he was binding the saddle of sheep's wool about the Arab's narrow girth he was surprised to find that the friendly son of Judah had followed him to the pasture. The man approached, as though one spirit urged him and another held him back, and offered Kenkenes the shelter of his tent for the night.

Somewhat gratified and astonished, Kenkenes, thanked him and declined. Still the Hebrew lingered and urged him with strange persistence. Kenkenes expressed his gratitude, but would not stay.

Having taken the road toward Tanis where Rachel might be in the hands of Har-hat, his heart seemed to turn to iron in his breast. All the energies and aims of his youth seemed to resolve into one grim and inexorable purpose.

It was far into the second watch when he left Pa-Ramesu. But the great city of tents was not yet sleeping.

The horse was anxious for a journey after a fortnight of idleness and he bade fair to keep pace with his rider's impatience. The Arabian hills had sunk below the sky-line and the Libyan desert was not marked by any eminence. With Pa-Ramesu behind him, a wide unbroken horizon belted the dusky landscape. The lights winked out over Goshen and the hamlets were not visible except as Kenkenes came upon them. The shepherd dogs barked afar off, or now and then a wakened bird cheeped drowsily, or the waters in the canals rippled over a pebbly space.

But these sounds ceased unaccountably, at last, and a silence settled down till the atmosphere was tense with stillness. A deadening hand seemed to cover the night.

The silence roused Kenkenes and he realized the solemnity of the earth, the vastness of the sky and the majesty of the solitude. Mysteriously affected, he withdrew within himself and humbly acknowledged the One God.

At midnight a chill struck the breeze and he drew his mantle about him while he rode. The wind freshened and a heated counter-current from the desert met it and they whirled away, rustling through the grassy country.

The Arab reduced his gallop so suddenly that Kenkenes was jolted. The small peaked ears of the horse went up and he showed a disposition to move sidewise into the meadow growth beside the way.

"A wild beast hath taken the road," Kenkenes thought.

The horse brought up, with a start, his prominent muscles twitching, and sniffed the air strongly.

A high oscillation in the atmosphere descended on Kenkenes.

The Arab reared, snorting, and then crouched, quivering with wild terror in every limb.

Unconscious, even of the movement, Kenkenes threw up his arm as if to ward off the blow and bent upon his horse's neck.

Gust after gust of icy air swept down on his head, as if winnowed by frozen wings. Then with a backward waft, colder than any wind he had ever known, the hovering Presence passed.

Instantly the horse plunged and took the road toward Tanis as if stung by a lash. Kenkenes, shaken and full of solemn dread, did well to keep his saddle. He grasped the stout leather bridle with strong hands, but he might have curbed the hurricane as easily. The Arab stretched his gaunt length, running low, and the haunted night reechoed with the sound of his hoofs. The land of Goshen lay east and west, with a slight divergence toward the north. The road to Tanis ran due north. It was not long until Kenkenes' flying steed brought him in sight of the un-Israelite Goshen. Illuminated windows starred the plain and the wind shrilling in Kenkenes' ears bore uncanny sounds. A turf-thatched hovel at the roadside showed a light as they swept by and a long scream clove the air, but the Arab was not to be halted.

The murmurous wind did not soothe him, and the wakeful night had a terror for him that he could not outrun. He veered sharply and galloped through the pastures to avoid a roadside hamlet that shrieked and moaned. He leaped irrigation canals and brush hedges, swept through fields and gardens, until, at last, by dint of persuasion, coupled with the animal's growing fatigue, Kenkenes succeeded in drawing the horse down into a milder pace.

The young man made no effort to fathom the mysterious visitation. Instead, he bowed his head and rode on, awed and humbled.

The night wore away and the gray of the morning showed him, strange-featured, the misty levels, meadows, fields and gardens of northern Goshen. The wind faltered and died; the stars, strewn down the east, paled and went out, one by one. Fragmentary clouds toward the sunrise became apparent, tinted, silvered and at last, like flakes of gold, scattered down to a point of intensest brilliance on the horizon. A lark sprang out of the wet, wind-mown grass of a meadow and shot up, up till it was lost in radiance and only a few of its exquisite notes filtered down to earth again.

A brazen rim showed redly on the horizon and the next instant the sun bounded above the sky-line.

It was the morning after the Passover, and Kenkenes, the son of Mentu, was the only Egyptian first-born that lived to see it break.



CHAPTER XLII

EXPATRIATION

At sunrise, Kenkenes drew up his horse and took counsel with himself. By steady riding he could reach Tanis shortly, but once within the capital of the Pharaoh, he was near to Har-hat and within reach of the fan-bearer's potent hand. When he entered the city he must be mentally and physically alert. He had not slept since the last daybreak, and he was weary and heavy-headed.

Ahead of him was a squat hamlet, set on the very border of Goshen. It was the same village that Seti had designated in his appointment with Moses. Here he might have found a hospitable roof and a pallet of matting, but the accompanying gratuity of curiosity and comment would have outweighed the small advantage of a bed indoors over a bed in the meadows.

He dismounted and, leading his horse some distance from the road, into the fringe of water-sprouts which lined the canal, picketed him within shade, out of view from the highway. Usually the meadow growth within reach of the seepage from the canals was most luxuriant, and here the flocks of the Israelites had come for sweet grass. They had kept the underbrush down, and the herbage closely cropped. But for two months Israel had been near Pa-Ramesu with its cattle, and the canal-borders were again riotous with growth. The place Kenkenes came upon was most tempting, odorous and cool. He rolled his mantle for a pillow and flung himself into the grass, where he lay, half-buried in green, and slept.

The April sun, hot as a torrid July noon in northern lands, discovered the sleeper and stared into his upturned face. He flung his arm across his eyes and slept on. Shadows fell and lengthened; the afternoon passed, and still he slept.

Mounted couriers riding at a dead gallop, passed over the road, toward Tanis. Following them, war-chariots thundered by with a castanet accompaniment of jingling harness and jarring armor. Kenkenes stirred during the tumult, but when it had receded he lay still again. Three mounted soldiers leading a score of horses passed. The Arab in the copse whinnied softly. A second trio of soldiers, following with a smaller drove, heard the call from the bushes and drew up. The foremost man spoke to another, tossed the knotted bridles to him and, dismounting, came through the copse to the Arab. There he found the young nobleman, sleeping.

For a moment he hesitated, but no longer. Silently he untied the horse, led him forth, attached him with the others and speedily took the road toward Tanis.

After these had passed the road was deserted and no more came that way. In a little time the sun set. The wind from the north freshened and swayed the close-standing bushes so that their branches chafed one against another. At the sound Kenkenes, ready to wake, stirred and opened his eyes. After a moment he sat up and looked for the Arab. The horse was gone.

Kenkenes arose and searched industriously. The trampled space in the road convinced him that the horse had departed with a number of others. Hoping that he might find some trace of the lost animal among the inhabitants, he went to the hamlet.

Two ragged lines of huts, built of sun-dried brick, formed a single straggling street. A low shed, the first building Kenkenes came upon, showed a flickering red light. A spare figure darted into it, just ahead of the young man.

From the threshold, the whole of the small interior was visible.

The light came from a small annealing oven. At a table, overlaid with a thin slab of stone, a man was modeling a cat in clay. On the opposite side of the room was a younger man, painting an image, preparatory to burning it in the oven. The walls were black with smoke, the floor strewn with broken images and dried crumbs of clay.

In the center of the room was the spare figure, in white robes. Kenkenes had opened his lips to speak when the conversation among the trio stopped him.

"Cowards! Dastards!" the spare man vociferated. "Is there not a patriot in Egypt? The Pharaoh in danger and not a man in the hamlet who will raise a heel to save him!"

"Holy Father," the short man protested, "the way is long, the horses have been required at our hands by the Pharaoh and were taken from us, and if there be evil omens, the king's sorcerers will discover them."

"King's sorcerers!" the spare man repeated indignantly. "There is not one of them who can tell a star from a fire-fly or read the events of yesterday! Horses! Must ye go mounted, in litters, in chariots, afraid of the harsh earth and a rough mile? In my youth, the young men went barefoot and traveled the desert for the joy of effort. Oh, for one of mine own best days! Horses!"

"Is the son of Hofa away?" the younger man asked. "He is a runner as well as a soldier."

The spare man broke out afresh.

"A runner! Aye, of a truth he is a runner. When the tidings came that the Pharaoh was to pursue the Israelites he ran his best—for the hay-fields—and is hidden safe under a swath somewhere—the craven!"

Kenkenes stepped into the shed.

"What is this concerning the Israelites?" he demanded.

The spare man turned and the two artisans gazed at the young sculptor with open mouths.

"The news is not to be cried abroad," the spare man replied shortly.

"Thou hast become cautious too late," Kenkenes retorted. "The most of thy talk have I heard. I would know the rest of it."

"By Bast, thou art imperious! In my great days the nobles groveled to me. Now, am I commanded by them. How thou art fallen, Jambres!

"The Israelites, my Lord," he continued mockingly, "departed out of the land of Goshen, in the early morning hours of this day, but the Pharaoh hath repented, and will pursue them—to turn them back, or to destroy them." The old man's voice lost its sarcasm and became anxious.

"But the signs are ominous, the portents are evil. I know, I know, for I am no less a mystic because I have fallen from state. His seers are liars, they can not guide the king. He must not pursue them, for death shadows him the hour he leaves the gates of Tanis. He must not go! I love him yet, and I can not see him overthrown."

"Thou art no more eager to stay him than I," Kenkenes answered quickly. "Thou art in need of a runner. I am one."

The eye of the sorcerer fell on the young man's dress.

"A runner among the nobility?" he commented suspiciously.

"Is a man less likely to be a patriot because he is of blood, or less fleet of foot because he is noble?"

"Nay; nor less useful because he is sharp of tongue. Come with me!" Jambres seized his arm and, hurrying him out of the shed, went through the ragged street to the shrine at the upper end of the village.

From the tunnel-like entrance between the dwarf pylons a light was diffused as though it came through thin hangings. The pair entered the porch and passed into the sanctuary.

Entering his study, Jambres made his way to the heavy table and, fumbling about the compartments under it, drew forth a wrapped and addressed roll. Taking up a lighted lamp, he scrutinized the messenger sharply.

While he gazed, Kenkenes took the opportunity of inspecting the priest. He had been a familiar figure about the palaces of two monarchs. For thirty years he had read the stars for the great Rameses, six for Meneptah, but he had measured rods with Moses and had fallen. From the pinnacle of power he had declined precipitately to the obscurest office in the priesthood. This bird-cote shrine was his.

"Art thou seasoned? Canst thou endure? Nay, no need to ask that," he answered himself, surveying the strong figure before him. "But who art thou?"

"I am the son of Mentu, the murket."

"The son of Mentu? Enough. If a drop of that man's blood runneth in thy veins, thou art as steadfast as death. Surely the gods are with me."

He opened a second compartment in the end of the table, but before he found what he sought he raised himself, suddenly.

"If thou art that son of the murket," he asked, "how is it thou art not dead?"

Kenkenes looked at him, wondering if the news of his supposed death had penetrated even to this little hamlet.

"Art thou not thy father's eldest born?" the priest asked further.

"His only child."

"What sheltered thee in last night's harvest of death?"

"Thou speakest in riddles, holy Father."

"Knowest thou not that every first-born in Egypt died last night at the Hebrew's sending?" the sorcerer demanded.

"The first-born of Egypt," Kenkenes repeated slowly. "At the Hebrew's sending?"

"Aye, by the sorcery of Mesu. Save for the eldest of Israel, there is no living first-born in Egypt to-day. From that most imperial Prince Rameses to the firstling of the cowherd, they are dead!"

The young man heard him first with a chill of horror, half-unbelieving, barely comprehending. He was not of Israel and yet he had been spared. Then he remembered the dread presence above him in the night,—the chill from its noiseless wing. A light, instant and brilliant as a revelation, broke over him. Unconsciously, he raised his eyes and clasped his hands against his breast. He knew that his God had acknowledged him.

When his thoughts returned to earth, he found the glittering eyes of the sorcerer fixed upon him.

"Seeing that thou dost live, tell me what sheltered thee in this harvest of death?" Jambres repeated.

"The Lord God of Israel, who reaped it."

The answer was direct and fearless. To the astonished priest who heard it, it seemed triumphant.

Each of the many emotions the sorcerer experienced, displayed itself, in turn, on his face,—amazement, anger, censure, irresolution, distrust. After a silence, he took up the scroll and made as if to return it to its hiding-place in the compartments under the table.

"Stay," Kenkenes said, laying his hand on the sorcerer's. "Put it not away, for I shall carry it. Shall I, being a believer in Israel's God, be willing for the Pharaoh to pursue Israel?"

"Nay," Jambres replied bluntly; "but thou wouldst stay him for Israel's sake; I would prevent him for his own."

"So the same end is accomplished, wherefore quarrel over the motive? But when thou speakest of Israel's sake, which, by the testimony of past events, is now the more imperiled, Egypt or Israel?"

"Egypt! But it shall not be wholly overthrown through mine incautious trust of a messenger."

The young man still retained his hold on the sorcerer's hand.

"Thou dost impugn my fidelity. Now, consider this. I could have defeated thee and accomplished the Pharaoh's undoing by refusing to carry the message, by keeping silence in yonder shed of image-makers. Is it not so?"

Jambres assented.

"Even so. Instead, I offered and now I insist. Now, if thou deniest me, there is none to carry the warning and thou, thyself, hast undone the Pharaoh."

The sorcerer put away the hand and showed no sign of softening.

"Nay, then," Kenkenes said, "there is no need of the writing. I shall warn the king by word of mouth." He turned away and walked swiftly toward the portals of the shrine. Jambres beheld him recede into the dusk and wavered.

"Stay!" he called.

Kenkenes stopped.

"Wilt thou swear fidelity by the holy Name?"

"Aye, and by that holier Name of Jehovah, also."

He returned and faced the priest. "Thou art mystic, Father Jambres," he said persuasively; "what does thy heart tell thee of me?"

"The supplication of the need indorses thee, as it indorses any desperate chance. If thou art false, thou art the instrument of Set, whom the Hathors have given to overthrow Egypt. If thou art true, the Pharaoh shall return safe to his capital in Memphis. The gratitude of Egypt will be sufficient reward."

"And I take the message?"

Jambres nodded. "Art thou armed?" he asked, bending again to look into the compartment he had opened.

"Except for my dagger, nay."

The sorcerer brought forth a falchion of that wondrous metal that could carve syenite granite and bite into porphyry; also, a pair of horse-hide sandals and a flat water-bottle.

"Put on these."

Kenkenes undid his cloak and untying his broidered sandals, wrapped them in his mantle and bound the roll, crosswise, on his back. Over this he slung the water-bottle, which the priest had filled in the meantime, fixed the falchion at his side and put on the horse-hide sandals.

"When hast thou broken thy fast?" the priest asked next.

"At sunset yesterday."

The priest turned with a sign to the young man to follow him and, passing through the shrine, led the way out of the sanctuary into the house of the sorcerer. Here, shortly, Kenkenes was served by a slave, with a haunch of gazelle-meat, lettuce, white bread and wine.

While he ate, the priest informed him of the situation he might expect to find at the end of his journey.

"The Israelites departed in the early hours of this morning taking the Wady Toomilat, east, toward the gates of the Rameside wall. It was the going forth of a multitude,—the exodus of a nation! And they will travel at the pace of their slowest lambs. Thus Meneptah can gather his legions and make ready to pursue ere they have reached the wall." The priest had begun calmly, but the thought of pursuit excited him.

"He must not follow!" he continued. "They are unarmed, but the Pharaoh deals with a wizard and a strange God—no common foe. And if these were all who have evil intents against him, but there is another—another!"

He came to the young man's side, saying in an excited whisper:

"There is another, I say, within the king's affections—a scorpion cherished in his bosom!"

The old man's vehemence and his words fired Kenkenes. He arose and faced Jambres with kindling eyes. The sorcerer went on with increasing excitement.

"Better that his slaves depart increased, enriched threefold by Egypt, better that never again one stone be laid upon another, nor monument bear the king's name, than that Meneptah should leave the precincts of shelter! For his enemy would lead him outside the pale of protection, and there put him to death, and wear his crown after him!"

During this impetuous augury, the young man naturally searched after the identity of the offender. Not Ta-user, nor Siptah, nor Amon-meses, for the sorry tale of Seti and the outlawing of the trio had reached him at Pa-Ramesu. Furthermore, they had never had a place in the affections of the king. There was a new conspirator! At this point the blood heated and went charging through the young man's veins.

"If the king's enemy be mine enemy," he declared passionately, "thou hast this hour commissioned and armed that enemy's dearest foe! Name him."

The priest shook his head. His excitement had not carried him beyond the limits of caution.

"Save for my mystic knowledge, I have no proof against him, and if I balk him not and offend him, he hath a heavy and a vengeful hand."

"And thou hast not named him in the writing?"

Again the priest shook his head.

"Then," said the young man firmly, "then will I name him to the Pharaoh!"

Jambres looked at Kenkenes with profound admiration, not unmixed with apprehension.

"Let not thy youthful zeal undo thee," he cautioned. "Perchance thou dost mistake the man."

"The gods did not bestow all the art upon the mystics when they endowed thee with divining powers. They gifted every man with a little of it, and it speaketh no less truthfully because it is small. Come, thy board has been generous and I am satisfied. I have another and a fiercer hunger I would appease. Give me the message and let me be gone."

Silent, the priest led the way again into the sanctuary. Taking the scroll from its hiding-place once more he said, as he gave it into the messenger's hands: "Go first to Tanis, and if thou findest not the king in his capital, seek until thou dost find him. And have a care to thyself."

Kenkenes hesitated a moment, and said at last:

"It may be that I shall not return, but I would have my father know that I died not with the first-born. Wilt thou tell him, when thou canst?"

"The word shall go to him by sunset to-morrow if I carry it myself."

Kenkenes expressed his thanks and the priest went on.

"Be not rash, I charge thee. Farewell, and thy father's gods attend thee."

Without the dwarf pylons, Kenkenes bent for the old man's blessing and turned away. Walking rapidly to the northern limits of the town, he took the dusty highway again, and struck into an easy run.

The road sloped up toward the north, but the rise was gradual and the ascent was not wearying. The miles slipped behind swiftly, for he covered them as naturally as the unloitering bird traverses the air.

In two hours he had reached the pinnacle of the upland. To the north the road led continuously down to the sea. He paused and looked back over the long gentle declivity toward the south and west.

A sharp pain pierced him. In that moment, he realized that he was expatriated. After he had warned Meneptah, Egypt dropped out of his aims. Thereafter he had the rescue of Rachel, or her avenging to accomplish, and the results following upon the necessity of either of these alternatives would not permit him to return into the land of his fathers. There was no turning back now, nor any desire in him to do so. His conscience had been witness to the renunciation of his nation and his faith, and it did not chide him.

Still he stretched out his arms to the limitless, featureless, velvety dusk that was Egypt by day, and wept.

He entered Tanis in the middle of the third watch, and there he learned that the Pharaoh had departed, but whither, the solemn, haggard citizens he met could not tell. He repaired to the inn, a house of mourning, also, and awaited the dawn. Then he looked on the funereal capital of Meneptah. The city no longer cried out; it sighed or sobbed, exhausted with its grief; it went the heavy round of labor demanded by the necessities of life, bowed, disheveled and blinded with woe. Kenkenes, humbled, sorrowful, and helpless, averted his eyes and hurried to the palace.

There he found that the queen and Seti, with all the queen's retinue, had departed on a pilgrimage to the temple of the sacred ram at Mendes for the welfare of the soul of Rameses. Masanath was in Pelusium mourning for her sister who died with the first-born. The others,—Har-hat, Hotep, Nechutes, Menes, Seneferu, Kephren the mohar,—all except the palace attendants had accompanied the king. The great house of the Pharaoh was empty, solitary and haunted.

The destination of the king was a state secret that had not been imparted to the chamberlains. Kenkenes returned into the unhappy streets again.

He went to the square in which the loiterers were congregated, even though there was one dead in the household, and seeking out the most intelligent, questioned him concerning the departure of the Pharaoh.

He learned that the king and the ministers had left Tanis, and driven south, the afternoon after the night of death. At nightfall, sixteen chariots from the nome followed him. And though the young man inquired of many sources in the capital, he discovered nothing further.

Avowedly, it was Meneptah's intent to overtake the Hebrews, turn them back, or destroy them. He could not accomplish that thing with a score of ministers and sixteen picked chariots. It was evident that he meant to collect an army near the track of the Hebrews, and that he had departed for the rendezvous.

If the Israelites traveled but two miles an hour, they could cover the distance between Pa-Ramesu and the Rameside wall by the sunset of this, the second day after the death of the first-born. It would have been the first act of the Pharaoh to close the gates of the wall against them. The army of the north could gather from the remotest nomes by the close of this day also. Therefore, the hour to proceed against the Israelites was not far away. Kenkenes knew that he might not delay, even for a short sleep, in Tanis.

He fixed upon Pithom as the chosen spot for the rendezvous, since it was situated on the Wady Toomilat.

He refreshed himself with a beaker of sour wine in which a recuperative simple had been stirred, and took the road to the south.

Immediately outside of the city walls he came upon the track of the departing king, and followed it faithfully as long as there was light to show it to him. A dozen miles out of Tanis he ceased to run, and thereafter his progress became slower as his fatigue increased. Toward the end of the first watch, at the northern borders of the district known as Succoth, at the extreme east of Goshen, he came upon a mighty track.

Even in the dark he could see that a diaphanous gauze of dust overhung it and the air was heavy with the most volatile particles. The sandy earth had been ground and worked to the depth of over a foot. How difficult had it been for the rearmost ranks to cover this ploughed soil! The track was a mile in width, and by the nature of the marks upon it, Kenkenes knew that husbandmen, not warriors, had passed over this spot. It was the path of Israel, leading east to the Rameside wall.

Kenkenes tightened his sandal straps and continued toward the south. Ahead of him, the horizon began to glow and then an edge,—a half,—all of a perfect moon lifted a vast orange disk above the world. At its first appearance it was sharply cut by a tower of the city of Pithom.

"Now, the God of Israel be thanked," he said to himself, "for another mile I can not cover."

The gates were tightly closed and a sentry from the wall challenged him.

"I bring a message to the Pharaoh," he answered.

"The Son of Ptah is not within the walls."

"Hath he departed," Kenkenes wearily asked, "or came he not hither?"

"He came not to Pithom."

"Come thou down, then, and let me in, friend, for I am spent."

In a little time, he entered the inn of the treasure city, was given a bed, upon which he flung himself without so much as loosening the kerchief on his head, and slept.



CHAPTER XLIII

"THE PHARAOH DREW NIGH"

In mid-afternoon of the following day, Kenkenes awoke and made ready to take up his search again. He was weary, listless and sore, but his mission urged him as if death threatened him.

The young man's athletic training had taught him how to recuperate. Most of the process was denied him now, because of his haste and the little time at his command, but the smallest part would be beneficial. He stepped into the streets of the treasure city, and paused again, till the recollection of the sorrow upon Egypt returned to him to explain the gloom over Pithom. The great melancholy of the land, attending him hauntingly, oppressed him with a sense of culpability. And he dared not ask himself wherein he deserved his good fortune above his countrymen, lest he seem to question the justice of the God of his adoption.

At a bazaar he purchased two pairs of horse-hide sandals, for the many miles on the roads had worn out the old and he needed foot-wear in reserve. From the booth he went straight to the baths, now wholly deserted; for when Egypt mourned, like all the East, she neglected her person.

When he came forth he was refreshed and stronger. Of the citizens, haggard and solemn as they had been in Tanis, he asked concerning the Pharaoh. None had seen him, nor had he entered the city. The last one he questioned was a countryman from Goshen, and from him he learned that the army was assembling in a great pasture on the southern limits of the Israelitish country.

At sunset he was again upon the way, taking the level highway of the Wady Toomilat for a mile toward the west, and turning south, after that distance, as the rustic had directed him.

The road was good and he ran with old-time ease. At midnight he came upon the spot where the army had camped, but the Pharaoh had already moved against Israel. He had left his track. The great belt of disturbed earth wheeled to the south, and as far as Kenkenes could see there was the same luminous veil of dust overhanging it, that he had noted over the path of Israel.

The messenger drank deep at an irrigation canal, for he turned away from water when he followed the army, and leaving the level, dust-cushioned road behind, plunged into a rock-strewn, rolling land, desolate and silent. The growing light of the moon was his only advantage.

The region became savage, the trail of the army wound hither and thither to avoid sudden eminences or sudden hollows. Kenkenes dogged it faithfully, for it found the smoothest way, and, besides, the wild beasts had been frightened from the track of a multitude.

In the early hour of the morning, Kenkenes emerged from a high-walled valley with battlemented summits. Before him was the army encamped, and wild, indeed, was the region chosen for the night's rest. The glistening soil was thickly strewn with rocks, varying in size from huge cubes to sharp shingle. Every abrupt ravine ahead was accentuated with profound shadow, and the dim horizon was broken with hills. The locality maintained an irregular slope toward the east. The camp stretched before the messenger for a mile, but the great army had changed its posture. It squatted like a tired beast.

Kenkenes approached it dropping with weariness, and after a time was passed through the lines and conducted to the headquarters of the king. In the center of the great field were pitched the multi-hued tents of Meneptah and his generals. Above them, turning like weather-vanes upon their staves, were the standards bearing the royal and divine device, the crown and the uplifted hands, the plumes and the god-head.

About the royal pavilion in triple cordon paced the noble body-guard of the Pharaoh.

Of one of these Kenkenes asked that a personal attendant of the king be sent to him.

In a little time, some one emerged from the Pharaoh's tent, and came through the guard-line to the messenger. It was Nechutes.

The cup-bearer took but a single glance at Kenkenes and started back.

"Thou!" he exclaimed in a hoarse whisper. "Out of Amenti!"

"And nigh returning into it again," was the tired reply.

In a daze, Nechutes took the offered hands and stared at Kenkenes through the dark.

"Where hast thou been?" he finally asked.

"In the profoundest depths of trouble, Nechutes, nor have I come out therefrom."

The cup-bearer's face showed compassion even in the dusk.

"Nay, now; thine was but the fortune a multitude of lovers have suffered before thee," he said, with a contrite note in his deep voice. "It was even odds between us and I won. Hold it not against me, Kenkenes."

It was the sculptor's turn to be amazed. But with one of the instant realizations that acute memory effects, he recalled that he had disappeared immediately after Nechutes had been accepted by the Lady Ta-meri. And now, by the word of the apologetic cup-bearer, was it made apparent to Kenkenes that a tragic fancy concerning the cause of his disappearance had taken root in the cup-bearer's mind. With a desperate effort, Kenkenes choked the first desire to laugh that had seized him in months.

"Nay, let it pass, Nechutes," he said in a strained voice. "Thou and I are friends. But lead me to the king, I pray thee."

"To the king?" the cup-bearer repeated doubtfully. "The king sleeps. Will thine interests go to wreck if thou bidest till dawn?"

"I carry him a message," Kenkenes explained.

"A message!"

"Even so. Hand hither a torch."

A soldier went and returned with a flaming knot of pitch. In the wavering light of the flambeau, Nechutes read the address on the linen scroll.

"The king could not read by the night-lights," he said after a little. "Much weeping is not helpful to such feeble eyes as his. Wait till dawn. My tent is empty and my bed is soft. Wait till daybreak as my guest."

"Where is Har-hat?"

"In his tent, yonder," pointing to a party-colored pavilion.

"Dost thou keep an unsleeping eye on the Pharaoh?"

"By night, aye."

Kenkenes had a thought to accept the cup-bearer's hospitality. He knew that the expected climax would follow immediately upon the king's perusal of the message, and that the nature of that climax depended upon himself. He needed mental vigor and bodily freshness to make effective the work before him. His cogitations decided him.

"Let the unhappy king sleep, then, Nechutes; far be it from me to bring him back to the memory of his sorrows. Lead me to thy shelter, if thou wilt."

With satisfaction in his manner Nechutes conducted his guest into a comfortably furnished tent, and showed him a mattress overlaid with sheeting of fine linen.

"Shame that thou must defer this soft sleeping till the noisy and glaring hours of the day," Kenkenes observed as he fell on the bed.

"By this time to-morrow night, I may content myself in a bed of sand with a covering of hyena-fending stones," the cup-bearer muttered.

"Comfort thee, Nechutes," the artist said sententiously, "But do thou raise me from this ere daybreak, even if thou must take a persuasive spear to me."

So saying, he fell asleep at once.

After some little employment among his effects, the cup-bearer came to the bedside on his way back to the king's tent, and bent over his guest.

"Holy Isis! but I am glad he died not!" he said to himself. "Aye, and there be many who are as glad as I am. Dear Ta-meri! She will be rejoiced, and Hotep. What a great happiness for the old murket—" he paused and clasped his hands together. "He is Mentu's only son! Now, in the name of the mystery-dealing Hathors, how came it that he died not with the first-born?" After a silence he muttered aloud: "Gods! the army would barter its mummy to have the secret of his safety, this day!"

At the first glimmerings of the dawn, the melody of many winded trumpets arose over the encampment of the Egyptians. Now the notes were near and clear, now afar and tremulous; again, deep and sonorous; now, full and rich, and yet again, fine and sweet. There is a pathos in the call of a war-trumpet that no frivolous rendering can subdue—it has sung so long at the death of men and nations.

Outlined in black silhouette against the whitening horizons, the sentries, tiny and slow-moving in the distance, tramped from post to post in a forward-leaning line. Soldiers began to shout to each other. The clanking of many arms made another and a harsher music. The tumult of thousands of voices burdened the wind and above this presently arose the eager and expectant whinnyings of a multitude of war-horses.

While the army broke its fast and prepared to move the king stood in the open space before his tent, with his eyes on the east. The Red Sea lay there beyond the uplifted line of desert sand, and it was the birthplace of many mists and unpropitious signs.

Would the sun look upon the king through a veil, or openly? Would he smile upon the purposes of the Pharaoh?

There were striations, watery and colorless, in the lower slopes of the morning sky, and these were taking on the light of dawn without its hues. Long wind-blown streaks crossed the zenith from east to west and the setting stars were blurred. The moon had worn a narrowing circlet in the night. Meneptah shook his head.

Suddenly some one in the ranks of the royal guard exclaimed to a mate:

"Look! Look to the southeast!"

Meneptah turned his eyes in that direction, as though he had been commanded. There, above the spot where he had guessed the Israelites to be, a straight and mighty column of vapor extended up, up into the smoky blue of the sky. The tortuous shapes of the striations across the zenith indicated that there was great wind at that height, but the column did not move or change its form. It was further distinguished from the clouds over the dawn, by a fine amber light upon it, deepening to gold in its shadows. So vivid the tint, that steady contemplation was necessary to assure the beholders that it was not fire, climbing in and out of the pillar's heart. Egypt's skies were rarely clouded and never by such a formation as this.

Meneptah turned his troubled eyes hurriedly toward the east. He must not miss the sunrise. At that moment, unheralded, the disk of the sun shot above the horizon as if blown from a crater of the under-world—blurred, milky-white, without warmth.

He turned away and faced Nechutes, bending before him; behind the cup-bearer, a stately stranger—Kenkenes.

"A message for thee, O Son of Ptah," Nechutes said.

At a sign from the king, the messenger came forward, knelt and delivered the scroll. The king looked at the writing on the wrapping.

"From whom dost thou bring this?" he asked.

"From Jambres, the mystic, O Son of Ptah."

"Ah!" It was the tone of one who has his surmises proved. "Now, what is contained herein?"

Kenkenes took it that the inquiry called for an answer.

"A warning, O King."

"How dost thou know?"

"The purport of the message was told me ere I departed."

"Wherefore? It is not common to lead the messenger into the secret he bears."

"I know, O Son of Ptah," Kenkenes replied quietly; "but the messenger who knew its contents would suffer not disaster or death to stay him in carrying it to thee."

As if to delay the reading of it, the king dismissed Nechutes and signed Kenkenes to arise. Then he turned the scroll over and over in his hands, inspecting it.

"Age does not cool the fever of retaliation," he said thoughtfully, "and this ancient Jambres hath a grudge against me. Come," he exclaimed as if an idea had struck him, "do thou open it."

Kenkenes took the scroll thrust toward him, and ripped off the linen wrapping. Unrolling the writing he extended it to the king.

"And there is naught in it of evil intent?" Meneptah asked, putting his hands behind him.

"Nay, my King; naught but great love and concern for thee."

"Read it," was the next command. "Mine eyes are dim of late," he added apologetically, for, through the young man's reassuring tones, a faint realization of the trepidation he had exhibited began to dawn on Meneptah.

Kenkenes obeyed, reading without emphasis or inflection, for he knew no expression was needed to convey the force of the message to the already intimidated king.

When Kenkenes had finished, Meneptah was standing very close to him, as if assured of shelter in the heroic shadow of the tall young messenger. The color had receded from the monarch's face, and his eyes had widened till the white was visible all around the iris.

"Call me the guard," he said hoarsely; but when Kenkenes made as if to obey, the king stayed him in a panic.

"Nay, heed me not. Mine assassin may be among them." The sound of his own voice frightened him. "Soft," he whispered, "I may be heard."

Kenkenes maintained silence, for he was not yet ready.

Meanwhile, the king turned hither and thither, essayed to speak and cautiously refrained, grew paler of face and wider of eye, panted, trembled and broke out recklessly at last.

"Gods! Trapped! Hemmed like a wild beast in a circle of spears! Nay, not so honestly beset. Ringed about by vipers ready to strike at every step! And this from mine own people, whom I have cherished and hovered over as they were my children—" His voice broke, but he continued his lament, growing unintelligible as he talked:

"Not enough that mine enemies menace me, but mine own must stab me in my straits! Not even is the identity of mine assassin revealed, and there is none on whom I may call with safety and ask protection—"

"Nay, nay, Beloved of Ptah," Kenkenes interrupted. "There be true men among thy courtiers."

"Not one—not one whom I may trust," Meneptah declared hysterically.

"Here am I, then."

Meneptah, with the inordinate suspicion of the hard-pressed, backed hurriedly away from Kenkenes.

"Who art thou?" he demanded. "How may I know thou art not mine enemy?"

"Not so," Kenkenes protested. "Give me ear, I pray thee. Would I have brought thee thy warning, knowing it such, were I thine enemy? And further, did not Jambres, the mystic, who readeth men's souls, trust me?"

"Aye, so it seems," the king admitted, glad to be won by such physical magnificence. "But who art thou?"

"Kenkenes, the son of Mentu, thy murket."

"It can not be," the king declared with suspicion in his eye. "The murket had but one son and he must be dead with the first-born."

"Nay; I was in the land of Goshen, the night of death, and the God of Israel spared me."

Meneptah continued to gaze at him stubbornly. Then a conclusive proof suggested itself to Kenkenes, which, under the stress of an austere purpose and a soul-trying suspense, he had no heart to use. But the need pressed him; he choked back his unwillingness, and submitted. Coming very close to Meneptah, he began to sing, with infinite softness, the song that the Pharaoh had heard at the Nile-side that sunrise, now as far away as his childhood seemed. How strange his own voice sounded to him—how out of place!

At first, the expression of surprise in the king's face was mingled with perplexity. But the dim records of memory spoke at the urging of association. After a few bars, the Pharaoh's countenance had become reassured. Kenkenes ceased at once.

"Enough!" Meneptah declared. "The gods have most melodiously distinguished thee from all others. Thou art he whom I heard one dawn, and mine heir in Osiris, my Rameses, told me it was the son of Mentu."

"Then, being of the house of Mentu, thou hast no fear of my steadfastness, O my Sovereign?"

"Nay; would that I might be as trustful of all my ministers. Alas, that a single traitor should lay the stain of unfaith upon all the court! Ah, who is mine enemy?"

The sentence, more exclamatory than questioning, seemed to the young man like a call upon him to voice his impeachments. His inclination pressed hard upon him and the tokens of his knowledge wrote themselves upon his open face. When a man is dodging death and expecting treachery, his perceptions become acute. The king, with his eyes upon the young man's countenance, caught the change of expression.

He sprang at Kenkenes and seized his arms.

"Speak!" he cried violently. "Thou knowest; thou knowest!"

A sudden ebullition of rage and vengeance sent a tingling current through the young man's veins. The moment had come. In the eye of a cautious man, he had been called upon for a dangerous declaration. He had a mighty man to accuse, no proof and little evidence at his command, and a weakling was to decide between them. But his cause equipped him with strength and a reckless courage. He faced the king fairly and made no search after ceremonious words. He spoke as he felt—intensely.

"Nay; it is thou who shalt tell me, O my King. I know thee, even as all Egypt knows thee. There is no power in thee for great evil, but behold to what depths of misery is Egypt sunk! Through thee? Aye, if we charge the mouth for the word the mind willed it to say. Have the gods afflicted thee with madness, or have they given thee into the compelling hands of a knave? Say, who is it, thou or another, who playeth a perilous game with Israel, this day, when its God hath already rent Egypt and consumed her in wrath? Like a wise man thou admittest thine error and biddest thy scourge depart, and lo! ere thy words are cold thou dost arise and recall them and invite the descent of new and hideous affliction upon thine empire! Behold the winnings of thy play, thus far! From Pelusium to Syene, a waste, full of famine, mourners and dead men, and among these last—thy Rameses!—"

Meneptah did not permit him to finish. Purple with an engorgement of grief and fury, the monarch broke in, flailing the air with his arms.

"Har-hat!" he cried. "Not I! Har-hat, who cozened me!"

The voice rang through the royal inclosure, and the ministers came running.

Foremost was Har-hat.

At sight of his enemy, the king put Kenkenes between him and the fan-bearer. At sight of Kenkenes, Har-hat stopped in his tracks.

Behind followed Kephren and Seneferu, the two generals, who, with the exception of Har-hat, the commander-in-chief, were the only arms-bearing men away from their places among the soldiers; after these, Hotep and Nechutes, Menes of the royal body-guard, the lesser fan-bearers, the many minor attaches to the king's person—in all a score of nobles.

They came upon a portentous scene.

The tumult of preparation had subsided and the hush of readiness lay over the desert. The orders were to move the army at sunrise, and that time was past. The pioneers, or path-makers for the army, were already far in advance. Horses had been bridled and each soldier stood by his mount. Captains with their eyes toward the royal pavilion moved about restlessly and wondered. The high commanding officers absent, the next in rank began to weigh their chances to assume command. Soldiers began to surmise to one another the cause of the delay, which manifestly found its origin in the quarters of the king.

All this was the environment of a hollow square formed by the royal guard. Within was the Pharaoh, shrinking by the side of his messenger. The messenger, taller, more powerful, it seemed, by the heightening and strengthening force of righteous wrath, faced the mightiest man in the kingdom. Har-hat, though a little surprised and puzzled, was none the less complacent, confident, nonchalant. Near the fan-bearer, but behind him, were the ministers, astonished and puzzled. But since the past days had been so filled with momentous events, they were ready to expect a crisis at the slightest incident.

The fan-bearer did not look at the king. It was Kenkenes who interested him.

The young man's frame did not show a tremor, nor his face any excitement. There was an intense quiescence in his whole presence. Hotep, who knew the provocation of his friend and interpreted the menace in his manner, walked swiftly over to Kenkenes, as if to caution or prevent. But the young sculptor undid the small hands of the king, clinging to his arm, and gave them to Hotep, halting, by that act, all interference from the scribe. Then he crossed the little space between him and the fan-bearer.

"What hast thou done with the Israelite?" he asked in a tone so low that none but Har-hat heard him. But the fan-bearer did not doubt the earnestness in the quiet demand.

"Hast thou come to trouble the king with thy petty loves, during this, the hour of war?"

"Answer!"

"She escaped me," the fan-bearer answered.

"A lie will not save thee; the truth may plead for thee before Osiris. Hast thou spoken truly?"

"I have said, as Osiris hears me. Have done; I have no more time for thee!"

"Stand thou there! I have not done with thee."

The thin nostril of the fan-bearer expanded and quivered wrathfully.

"Have a care, thou insolent!" he exclaimed.

Kenkenes did not seem to hear him. He had turned toward Meneptah.

"I have dared over-far, my King," he said, "because of my love for Egypt and my concern for thee. Bear with me further, I pray thee."

Meneptah bent his head in assent.

"Suffer mine inquiry, O Son of Ptah. Wilt thou tell me upon whose persuasion thou hast gathered thine army and set forth to pursue Israel?"

"Upon the persuasion of Har-hat, my minister."

"Yet this question further, my King. Wherefore would he have thee overtake these people?"

"Since it was foolish to let them go, being my slaves, my builders and very needful to Egypt. But most particularly to execute vengeance upon them for the death of my Rameses, and for the first-born of Egypt."

"Ye hear," Kenkenes said to the nobles. Then he faced Har-hat. The fan-bearer's countenance showed a remarkable increase of temper, but there was no sign of apprehension or discomfiture upon it.

"Thou hast beheld the grace of thy king under question," Kenkenes said calmly. "Therefore thou art denied the plea that submission to the same thing will belittle thee. Thy best defense is patience and prompt answer."

"Perchance the king will recall his graceful testimony," Har-hat replied with heat, "when he learns he hath been entangled in the guilty pursuit of a miscreant after—"

Kenkenes stopped him with a menacing gesture.

"Say it not; nor tempt me further! Thou speakest of a quarrel between thee and me, and of that there may be more hereafter. Now, thou art to answer to mine impeachment of thee as an offender against the Pharaoh."

Har-hat received the declaration with a wrathful exclamation.

"Thou! Thou to accuse me! I to plead before thee! By the gods, the limit is reached. The ranks of Egypt have been juggled, the law of deference reversed! A noble to bow to an artisan! Age to give account of itself to green youth!"

"And thou pratest of law! The benefits of law are for him who obeys it; the reverence of youth is for the honorable old. But thou wastest mine opportunity. Thou shalt silence me no longer.

"Thy dearest enemy, O Har-hat," Kenkenes continued, "would not impugn thy wits. He deserves the epithet himself who calls thee fool. But be not puffed up for this thing I have said. Thou hast made a weapon of thy wits and it shall recoil upon thee. Thou seest Egypt; not in all the world is there another empire so piteously humbled. Her fields are white with bones instead of harvests; her cities are loud with mourning instead of commerce; the desert hath overrun the valley. And this from the hands of the Hebrews' God! Who doubts it? Hath Egypt won any honor in this quarrel with Israel? Look upon Egypt and learn. Hath the army of the Pharaoh availed him aught against these afflictions? Remember the polluted waters, the pests, the thunders, the darkness, the angel of death and tell me. 'Vengeance?' Vengeance upon a God who hath blasted a nation with His breath? Chastisement of a people whose murmurs brought down consuming fire upon the land? And yet, for vengeance and chastisement hast thou urged the king to follow after Israel. I know thee better, Har-hat! That serviceable wit of thine hath not failed thee in an hour. Thou hast not wearied of life that thou courtest destruction by the Hebrews' God. Never hast thou meant to overtake Israel! Never hast thou thought further to provoke their God! Rather was it thine intent here, somewhere in the desert, thyself to be a plague upon Meneptah and wear his crown after him!"

Confident were the words, portentous the manner as though proof were behind, astounding the accusation. One by one the ministers had fallen away from Har-hat and placed themselves by the king. After a long time of humiliation for them, the supplanter, the insulter, was overtaken, his villainy uncovered to the eyes of the king. Kenkenes had justified them, and their triumph had come with a gust of wrath that added further to their relief.

Hotep gazed fixedly at Kenkenes. Where had this young visionary, new-released from prison, found evidence to impeach this powerful favorite? How was he fortified? What would be his next play? How much more did he know? And while Hotep asked himself these things, trembling for Kenkenes, Har-hat put the same questions to himself. The roll of papyrus, with its seals, still in the young man's hands, was significant. He folded his arms and forced the issue.

"Your proof," he demanded.

"Both the hour and need of my proof are past. Already art thou convicted." Kenkenes indicated the king and the ministers behind him. The fan-bearer followed the motion of the arm and for the first time met the gaze of the angry group.

Kenkenes had not ventured blindly, nor dared without deep and shrewd thought. When the artist-soul can feel the fiercer passions it has the capacity to work them out in action. Kenkenes, having been wronged, grew vengeful, and therefore had it within him to aspire to vengeance. He knew his handicap, but had estimated well his strength. With calmness and deliberation he had studied conditions, assembled all contingencies and fortified himself against them, gathered hypotheses, summarized his evidence and brought about that which he had planned to accomplish—the destruction of Har-hat's rule over Meneptah.

Har-hat was alone. Before him were all the powers of the land arrayed against him. Behind him in Tanis was Seti, the heir, who hated him, and the queen who had turned her back upon him. He had not seen the need of friends during the days of his supremacy over Meneptah. Now, not all his denials, eloquence, subtleties could establish him again in the faith of the frightened king. His ministership had crumbled beyond reconstruction. What would avail him, then, to defend himself? What proof had he to offer against this impeachment? The young man's argument met him at every avenue toward which he might turn for escape. At best his future in Egypt would be mere toleration; the worst, condign punishment.

A flame of feeling surged into his face. With a wide sweep of his arm, as though to thrust away pretense, he faced the ministers, all the defiance and audacity of his nature faithfully manifested in his manner.

"Why wait ye? Would ye see me cringe? Would ye hear me deny, protest, deprecate? Go to! ye glowering churls, I disappoint you! Flock to the king; dandle the royal babe a while! Endure the stress a little, for ye will not serve him long. And thou," whirling upon Kenkenes, "dreamest thou I fear this bloody God of Israel, or all the gibbering, incense-sniffing, pedestal-cumbering gods of earth? I will show thee, thou ranting rabble spawn! See which of us hath the yellow-haired wanton when I return. For I go to wrest spoil and fighting men from Israel. Then, by all the demons of Amenti! then, I say! look to thy crown, thou puny, puling King!"

With a bound he broke through the cordon of royal guards, leaped into his chariot, and putting his horses to a gallop, drove at full speed to his place at the head of the army. There, in an instant, clear and long-drawn, his command to mount rang over the desert. Front and rear, wing and wing, the trumpets took up the call, "To horse!" A second command in the strong voice, a second winding of the many trumpets, and with a rush of air and jar of earth the great army of the Pharaoh swept like the wind toward the sea.

Kenkenes, Menes, Nechutes and those of the royal guard that had started in pursuit of the traitor, did well to save themselves from annihilation under the hoofs of twenty thousand horse. Bewildered and amazed, they were an instant realizing what was taking place.

"He is running away with the army!" they said to themselves in a daze. "He is running away with the army!" And they knew that not all the efforts of the guards and the ministers and the Pharaoh himself would avail, for the army had received its orders from its great commander and no man but he might turn it back.

So the short-poled chariots, multi-tinted and gorgeous, wheel to wheel, axle-deep in a cloud of dust, glittered out across the desert—sixty ranks, ten abreast. Far to the left moved the horsemen, the dust of their rapid passage hiding their galloping mounts up to the stirrup. To the watchers by the king they seemed like an undulant sea of quilted helmets and flying tassels, while the sunlight smote through a level and straight-set forest of spears. They were seasoned veterans, many of them heroes of a quarter-century of wars. They had followed Rameses the Great into Asia and had extended the empire and the prowess of arms to the farthest corners of the known world. They had drunk the sweets of unalloyed victory from the blue Nile to the Euphrates and had filled Egypt with booty, scented with the airs of Arabia, gorgeous from the looms of India, and heavy with the ivory and gold of Ethiopia.

Now they went in formidable array in pursuit of two millions of slaves to dye their axes in unresisting blood, to return, not as victors over a heroic foe, but as drivers of men, herders of sheep and cattle, and laden with inglorious spoil.

Behind them, in regular ranks, beaten by their drivers into an awkward run, came the sumpter-mules, and after them the rumbling carts filled with provision.

Meneptah, raging and weeping, saw his army leave him and gallop in an aureole of dust toward the Red Sea.

Thus it was that "the Pharaoh drew nigh," but came no farther after Israel.



CHAPTER XLIV

THE WAY TO THE SEA

Kenkenes did not remain long in the apathy of amazement and helplessness. Consternation possessed him the instant he roused himself sufficiently to realize and speculate. He had saved the king and exposed Har-hat, but the accomplishing of this temporary good had forced the probable commission of a great evil. If death in some form did not overtake the fan-bearer he could enrich and strengthen himself from Israel. Then, even if Meneptah's army did not continue to follow him, he would be enabled to buy mercenaries and return equipped to do battle with Meneptah, even as he had vowed. The flower of the military was with him; the Pharaoh was incapable and Egypt demoralized. The success of the traitor seemed assured. What then of Rachel, of his own father, of the faithful ministers, of all whom Kenkenes had loved or befriended? The thought filled him with resolution and vigor.

"If the Lord God of Israel overtake him not," he said, returning to the king, "then must I! For, in my good intent, it seems that I have undone thee. Hotep," he continued, taking the scribe's hands, "let my father know that I died not with the first-born. Also, thou seest the danger into which the nation hath descended in this hour. Help thou the king! I return not. Farewell."

He kissed the scribe on the lips, and freeing himself from his clinging hands, ran through the broken line of the royal guards.

The army was already a compact cluster in the center of a rolling cloud of dust to the south.

When Nechutes had aroused him before daybreak, the cup-bearer had brought Hotep with him, and while the messenger broke his fast, he had availed himself of the scribe's presence to learn many things. Not the smallest part of his information was the fact that the Pharaoh's scouts had located Israel encamped on a sedgy plain at the base of a great hill on the northern-most arm of the Red Sea. Meneptah's army had marched twenty-five miles due south of Pithom and pitched its tents for the night. It was twenty-five miles from that point to Baal-Zephon or the hill before which Israel had camped. The fugitives had chosen the smoothest path for travel, keeping along the Bitter Lakes that their cattle might feed. Their track led in a southeasterly direction.

But Har-hat, making off with the army, had struck due south. He had chosen this line for more than one advantage it offered. The Arabian desert approached the sea in a series of plateaux or steps. The most westerly was surmounted by a ridge of high hills, higher probably than any other chain within the boundaries of Egypt. The most easterly overlooked the sea-beach and was originally, it may be, the old sea margin. At points the table-land advanced within sight of the water; at other localities an intervening space of several miles lay between it and the sea. The summit was flat, at least smooth enough for the passage of horsemen, and at all times it was a good field for strategic manoeuverings by an army arrayed against anything which might be on the beach below.

If Meneptah's scouts had reported truly, Israel had behind it a hill, east of it the sea. West of it the army would approach. South only could it flee, into a torrid, arid, uninhabited desert.

The slaves were entrapped. The pursuer had but to follow the pursued in the only open direction, and overtake the starving, thirsting multitude at last. But from Har-hat's movement he had meant to continue along this plateau, out of sight of Israel, until he had posted part of his army in the way of escape to the south. Kenkenes reached this conclusion without much pondering. He had his own manoeuverings in mind. Of the captain of Israel, Prince Mesu, he would discover, first, if the Lord God had prepared him against Har-hat. This grave question answered to the repose of his mind concerning the welfare of Israel, the path of his next duty would be clearly laid for him. He would join the army and take the life of the fan-bearer, for the sake of all he loved, and Egypt. In the course of the day's events his motive had been exalted from the personal desire for revenge to the high intent of a patriot. He felt most confident that he would forfeit his own life in the act.