ight
be able to lift the suspense that burdened his unhappy heart.

"Har-hat--Set make a cinder of his heart!--asked her at the hands of
the Pharaoh for his harem--"

Mentu interrupted him with a growling imprecation and Hotep's fair face
darkened.

"Yesterday morning he sent three men to me," the taskmaster continued,
"with the document of gift from the Son of Ptah, but she saw them in
time and fled into the desert. At that hour there were only women in
the camp, and the three men made short work of me when I would have
held them till she escaped. In three hours, two of them returned--one,
sick from hard usage, and the third, they said, had been pitched over
the cliff-front into the valley of the Nile. They had not captured her
and they were too much enraged to explain why they had not. During
their absence I emptied the quarries of Israelites and posted them
along the Nile to halt the Egyptians, if they came to the river with
Rachel. But we let them return to Memphis empty-handed, and thereafter
searched the hills till sunset. The maiden's foster-mother, it seems,
fled with her, but neither of them, nor any trace of them, was to be
found."

"Does it not appear to thee," Hotep asked, after a little silence,
"that the same hand which so forcibly persuaded the Egyptians to
abandon the pursuit may have led the maiden to a place of safety? My
surmises have been right in general, O noble Mentu, but not in detail,"
he continued, turning to the murket. "There is, however, the element
of danger now to take the place of the gracelessness we would have laid
to him. Thou knowest Har-hat, my Lord."

He thanked the dark-faced taskmaster. "Have no concern for the maiden.
She is safe, I doubt not."

He took Mentu's arm and passing up through the Israelitish camp,
climbed the slope behind it.

"It is my duty and thine to hide this lovely folly up here, ere these
searching minions of Har-hat or frantic Israelites come upon it."

The scribe's sense of direction and location was keen. It was one of
the goodly endowments of the savage and the beast which the gods had
added to the powers of this man of splendid intellect. He doubled back
through the great rocks, his steps a little rapid and never hesitating,
as though his destination were in full view. Mentu followed him,
silent and moodily thoughtful. At last Hotep stopped.

Before them was a narrow aisle leading down from the summit of the
hill. It was hemmed i