re they departed,
Masanath, at Rachel's bidding, wrote with a soft soapstone upon the
rock over the portal of the tomb, the whereabouts of its whilom
dwellers:

"Her, whom thou seekest, thou wilt find at the mansion of Har-hat in
the city."

At sunset, Rachel, all unsuspecting, was sheltered in the house of her
enemy.

Masanath's servants had sought for her, frantically and without system
or method. Pepi and Nari had been saved by the gods. They did not
know where she had gone, and nothing human or divine could have driven
them over the Nile to search for her in the Arabian hills. And for
that reason likewise, they did not notify Har-hat of his daughter's
loss. The messenger would have had to cross the smitten river. They
intended to send for the fan-bearer, but they waited for the plague to
lift. When it was gone, Masanath returned to them.

CHAPTER XXX

"HE HARDENED HIS HEART"

The Nile rose and fell and the seasons shifted until eight months had
passed. The period was inconsiderable, but its events had never been
equaled in a like space, or a generation, or a whole dynasty, or in all
the history of Egypt.

When the ancient Hebrew shepherd from Midian first demanded audience
with Meneptah, Egypt was autocrat of the earth and mistress of the
seas. Her name was Glory and Perpetual Life and her substance was all
the fullness of the earth and the treasures thereof. But eight months
after the Hebrew shepherd had gone forth from that first audience, how
had the mighty fallen! She was stripped of her groves and desolated in
her wheat-fields; her gardens were naked, her vineyards were barren,
and the vultures grew fat on the dead in her pastures. About the
thrice-fortified walls of her cities her gaunt husbandmen were camped,
pensioners upon the granaries of the king. Her commerce had stagnated
because she had no goods to barter; her society ceased to revel, for
her people were called upon to preserve themselves. Her arts were
forgotten; only religion held its own and that from very fear. Egypt
was on her knees, but the gods were aghast and helpless in the face of
the hideous power of the unsubstantial, unimaged God of Israel.

Never had a monarch been forced to meet such conditions, but in all the
mighty line of Pharaohs no feebler king than Meneptah could have faced
them. In treating with the issue he had fretted and fumed, promised
and retracted, temporized with the Hebrew mystic or stormed