ce he had left it for the desert, eight months before. Now,
the change in the great capital of the south impressed itself upon him,
in spite of his haste and his all-absorbing thought of Memphis. The
activities of life seemed to be suspended. The call to prayers could
be heard hourly from the great gongs of the temple at Karnak, when in
happier days the sound had been lost in the city's noises within the
very shadow of the pylons. He could hear strains of music in religious
processions, when the wind was fair, but he missed the acclaim of the
populace. Besides these sounds, silence had settled over Thebes.
Booths were closed in many instances; the streets, which ordinarily
were quiet, were now deserted; there were no carpets swinging from
balconies and housetops, and the citizens he saw were sober of
countenance and of garb. So few, indeed, he met, that he noted each
passer-by as an event. Once, some distance away from him, he saw again
the youth whom he had met in the doorway of the prison.

At a caterer's he purchased supplies for a day's journey and looked
about him for a carrier. Catching the boy's eye, he beckoned him, but
the youth turned on his heel and disappeared. The son of the merchant
offering himself, Kenkenes continued rapidly toward the river where he
engaged a vessel to take him to Memphis.

He roused the boatmen into immediate activity by promises of reward for
every mile gained over the average day's journey. Their passenger and
cargo shipped, the men fell to their oars and the craft shot out of the
still waters by the landings into midstream and turned toward the north.

As they cleared, the private passage boat belonging to a nobleman swept
up near to them and crossing their track took the same direction
several hundred yards nearer the Libyan shore. Kenkenes noted that it
was a bari of elegant pattern, deep draft and more numerously manned
than his. He noted further that one of the boat's crew was the youth
he had met thrice in a short space at Thebes.

"Small wonder that he was not willing to serve me," he commented to
himself.

If he observed the companion boat during the next five days it was to
remark that since his own vessel kept sturdily alongside one of
superior rowing force his men were of a surety earning the promised
reward. When they entered the long straight stretches of the Middle
country the elegant stranger dropped behind and attended Kenkenes and
his crew more dist