he gasped in low tones:

"Well, all is well . . . only one thing . . . my body . . . unembalmed
. . . without the sacred amulets. . . ."

But the old man answered:

"As soon as you have closed your eyes, I will give it, carefully wrapped,
to the Phoenician captain now tarrying here, that he may deliver it to
your father."

Kasana tried to turn her head toward him to thank him with a loving
glance, but she suddenly pressed both hands on her breast, crimson blood
welled from her lips, her cheeks varied from livid white to fiery scarlet
and, after a brief, painful convulsion, she sank back. Death laid his
hand on the loving heart, and her features gained the expression of a
child whose mother has forgiven its fault and clasped it to her heart ere
it fell asleep.

The old man, weeping, closed the dead girl's eyes. Ephraim, deeply moved,
kissed the closed lids, and after a short silence Nun said:

"I do not like to enquire about our fate beyond the grave, which Moses
himself does not know; but whoever has lived so that his or her memory is
tenderly cherished in the souls of loved ones, has, I think, done the
utmost possible to secure a future existence. We will remember this dead
girl in our most sacred hours. Let us do for her corpse what we promised,
and then set forth to show the man for whom Kasana sacrificed what she
most valued that we do not love him less than this Egyptian woman."

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

I do not like to enquire about our fate beyond the grave
Then hate came; but it did not last long

JOSHUA

By Georg Ebers

Volume 5.

CHAPTER XXIV.

The prisoners of state who were being transported to the mines made slow
progress. Even the experienced captain of the guards had never had a more
toilsome trip or one more full of annoyances, obstacles, and mishaps.

One of his moles, Ephraim, had escaped; he had lost his faithful hounds,
and after his troop had been terrified and drenched by a storm such as
scarcely occurred in these desert regions once in five years, a second
had burst the next evening--the one which brought destruction on
Pharaoh's army--and this had been still more violent and lasting.

The storm had delayed the march and, after the last cloud-burst, several
convicts and guards had been attacked by fever owing to their wet
night-quarters in the open air. The Egyptian asses, too, who were unused
to rain, had suffered and some of the best had been