their hearts, and told each other of their love and of their sufferings,
their wanderings and escapes.

At noonday the hunter's daughter came to offer them a pitcher full of
goat's milk, and Bent-Anat filled the gourd again and again for the man
she loved; and waiting upon him thus, her heart overflowed with pride,
and his with the humble desire to be permitted to sacrifice his blood and
life for her.

Hitherto they had been so absorbed in the present and the past, that they
had not given a thought to the future, and while they repeated a hundred
times what each had long since known, and yet could never tire of
hearing, they forgot the immediate changes which was hanging over them.

After their humble meal, the surging flood of feeling which, ever since
his morning devotions, had overwhelmed the poet's soul, grew calmer; he
had felt as if borne through the air, but now he set foot, so to speak,
on the earth again, and seriously considered with Bent-Anat what steps
they must take in the immediate future.

The light of joy, which beamed in their eyes, was little in accordance
with the grave consultation they held, as, hand in hand, they descended
to the hut of their humble host.

The hunter, guided by his daughter, met them half way, and with him a
tall and dignified man in the full armor of a chief of the Amalekites.

Both bowed and kissed the earth before Bent-Anat and Pentaur. They had
heard that the princess was detained in the oasis by force by the
Ethiopian troops, and the desert-prince, Abocharabos, now informed them,
not without pride, that the Ethiopian soldiers, all but a few who were
his prisoners, had been exterminated by his people; at the same time he
assured Pentaur, whom he supposed to be a son of the king, and Bent-Anat,
that he and his were entirely devoted to the Pharaoh Rameses, who had
always respected their rights.

"They are accustomed," he added, "to fight against the cowardly dogs of
Kush; but we are men, and we can fight like the lions of our wilds. If we
are outnumbered we hide like the goats in clefts of the rocks."

Bent-Anat, who was pleased with the daring man, his flashing eyes, his
aquiline nose, and his brown face which bore the mark of a bloody
sword-cut, promised him to commend him and his people to her father's
favor, and told him of her desire to proceed as soon as possible to the
king's camp under the protection of Pentaur, her future husband.

The mountain chief had gazed a