he
last few days had taken from it, while quick succeeding thoughts of
escape and flight passed across my brain. All through the fiery time
we had just had the chance of escaping with the fair booty yonder had
been present. Without her, flight would have been easy enough, but that
was not worth considering for a moment. With her it was more
difficult, yet, as I had watched the woodmen, accustomed to cool forest
shades, faint under the fiery glare of the world above, to make a dash
for liberty seemed each hour more easy. I had seen the men in the
streets drop one by one, and the spears fall from the hands of guards
about the pallisades; I had seen messengers who came to and fro
collapse before their errands were accomplished, and the forest women,
who were Heru's gaolers, groan and drop across the thresholds of her
prison, until at length the way was clear--a babe might have taken what
he would from that half-scorched town and asked no man's leave. Yet
what did it avail me? Heru was helpless, my own spirit burnt in a
nerveless frame, and so we stayed.

But with rain strength came back to both of us. The guards, lying
about like black logs, were only slowly returning to consciousness; the
town still slept, and darkness favoured; before they missed us in the
morning light we might be far on the way back to Seth--a dangerous way
truly, but we were like to tread a rougher one if we stayed. In fact,
directly my strength returned with the cooler air, I made up my mind to
the venture and went to Heru, who by this time was much recovered. To
her I whispered my plot, and that gentle lady, as was only natural,
trembled at its dangers. But I put it to her that no time could be
better than the present: the storm was going over; morning would "line
the black mantle of the night with a pink dawn of promise"; before any
one stirred we might be far off, shaping a course by our luck and the
stars for her kindred, at whose name she sighed. If we stayed, I
argued, and the king changed his mind, then death for me, and for Heru
the arms of that surly monarch, and all the rest of her life caged in
these pallisades amongst the uncouth forms about us.

The lady gave a frightened little shiver at the picture, but after a
moment, laying her head upon my shoulder, answered, "Oh, my guardian
spirit and helper in adversity, I too have thought of tomorrow, and
doubt whether that horror, that great swine who has me, will not invent
an excus