command. Then he
subsided into a numb endurance till what time his prayers should be
answered.

Eight days later, about mid-afternoon, while he lay on his pallet, the
door was flung open and his messenger stood without. With a cry,
Kenkenes leaped to his feet and wrenched the scroll from the man's
hand. With unsteady fingers he ripped off the linen cover and read.

The letter was from Hotep, conveying such information regarding his
imprisonment as we already know. If was couched in the gentlest terms,
and contained that essence of hope which loving spirits can extract
from the most desperate situation, for another's sake. But for all the
kindly intent of the scribe, his news was none the less unhappy. The
dreaded had come to pass, and the war between hope and fear was at an
end. Kenkenes read the missive calmly, and paid the messenger
according to his promise. The jailer, who had come with the man, read
the sentence and bade the prisoner make his choice of labor.

"Anything, so it will but give me a glimpse of the horizon," he said.

"Thou wilt pay dearly for thy sky," the keeper cautioned him. "The
softest labor is within doors."

"Give me my wish according to the command of the prince."

The jailer shrugged his shoulders. "As thou wilt. Make ready to
follow the canal-workers, to-morrow."

When the door fell shut again, Kenkenes returned to his pallet and
re-read the scroll.

A year's imprisonment! The sentence defined was the sum of daily
shame, sorrow, homesickness and misanthropy. Shame in the proud man
admits of no degrees of intensity. If it exist at all, it is
superlative. To this was added the loss of Rachel. How little it
would take to satisfy him, now that she was wholly denied to his eyes!
Only to look down on her again, unseen, from his aery in the rocks over
the valley!

Hotep had offered him hope, based on circumstantial evidence and fact.
Har-hat could not add to his sentence. That was the only indisputable
cheer he could give. But would Rameses stay the chief adviser's hand,
seeing that the winning of Masanath depended on the prince's
neutrality, as Hotep had explained? If Rachel fled to Mentu, as
Kenkenes had bidden her, could the murket protect her, even at his own
peril? Might not the heavy hand of the powerful favorite fall also on
the head of the king's architect? Wherein was the murket more immune
than his son? Rachel's destruction seemed to be decreed by the Hathor