cles
confronted him. He waved his arms and put forward a foot. The ground
was lower than he thought, and he stepped weightily. He brought up the
other foot laboriously, hesitatingly. This was not advance, but
time-losing.

Meanwhile, what might not be happening to Rachel in this chaos of gloom
and clamor? Why need he hide his escape? None of these near-by
assailants had any care now save for his own safety.

He called her name loudly and listened.

There was no answer in her voice.

He forced himself to move, but had the next step led into an abyss his
feet could not have been more reluctant. He flailed the air with his
arms and accomplished another pace. He realized that he could not
reach, in an hour, at this rate, the spot in which he had last seen
her. Again he called, using his full lung power, but the only reply
was an echo, or the hoarse supplications of men, near him and on the
river. The river! Had Rachel gone that way too far and beyond
retreat? The thought chilled him with terror and horror.

He execrated himself for his trepidation and strove wildly to proceed;
but strive as he might he could not advance. How long since the
darkness had fallen, and he had moved but two paces from the spot in
which it had overtaken him! The outcry near him subsided into low
murmurs of terror, and none lifted a voice in answer to his distracted
call.

If Rachel had been near she would have replied to him. The
alternatives he had to choose as her possible fate were death in the
Nile or capture by Unas. The one he fought away from him wildly, the
other made him frantic. And the realization of his own helplessness,
with the picture of her distress at that moment, crushed him.

A tangle of wind-mown reeds tripped him and pitched him to his knees
among the high marsh growth.

He did not rise.

The babe in pain cries to his mother; the man in his maturity may
outgrow the susceptibility to tears, but he never outwears the want of
a stronger spirit upon which to call in his hour of distress.

For Kenkenes it had been a far cry, from his careless days and his
empyrean populous with deities, to this utter and unhappy night and one
unseen Power. In that time he had run the gamut of sensations from a
laugh to a wail. Now was his need the sorest of all his life. The
most helpful of all hands must aid him. His fathers' gods were in the
dust. What of that unapproachable, unfeeling Omnipotence he had
create