le than in
tranquillity.

The white fronts of Memphis receded slowly, for neither took up the
oars. Hotep hesitated to break the silence that fell after the end of
the hymn. The shadow on the singer's face proved that the heart would
have flinched at any effort to soothe it. It was the young sculptor's
privilege to speak first.

After a long silence, Kenkenes roused himself.

"Look to the course of the bari, Hotep, and chide it with an oar if it
means to beach us. I doubt me much if I am fit to control it with the
wine of this wind on my brain."

Hotep took up the oars and rowed strongly. "Thine offense does not sit
heavily on thy conscience," he said.

"I have made my peace with Athor."

"Hath she given thee her word?"

"Nay, no need. For I did not offend her. Rather hath she abetted
me--urged me in my trespass. She persuaded me to become vagrant with
her, and I followed the divine runaway into the desert. I doubt not I
was chosen because I was as lawless as her needs required. Athor is
beautiful and would prove herself so to her devotees. And to me was
the lovely labor appointed."

Hotep looked at him mystified.

"By the gods," he said at last, "thou hadst better get in out of this
wind."

Kenkenes laughed genuinely. "My babble will take meaning ere long. If
thou questionest me, I must answer, but I am determined not to betray
my secret yet."

"Go we to On?" Hotep asked plaintively, after a long interval of
industry for him and dream for Kenkenes. The young sculptor sat up and
looked at the opposite shore. "Nay," he cried, "we are long past the
place where we should have landed. Yonder is the Marsh of the
Discontented Soul. Let me row back."

He turned and pulled rapidly toward the eastern shore. Away to the
south, behind them, were the quarries of Masaarah. But they were still
a considerable distance above Toora, a second village of
quarry-workers, now entirely deserted. The pitted face of the mountain
behind the town was without life, for, as has been seen, Meneptah was
not a building monarch. Directly opposite them the abrupt wall of the
Arabian hills pushed down near to the Nile and the intervening space
was a flat sandy stretch, ending in a reedy marsh at the water's edge.
The line of cultivation ended far to the south and north of it, though
the soil was as arable as any bordering the Nile. A great number of
marsh geese and a few stilted waders flew up or plunged into the w