only had it failed, but then Hapi, the holy river, had been
smitten also.

The spring bubbled up at the division of a road. One branch led along
the northern bank of the Rameside canal, eastward to Pa-Ramesu. The
other crossed the northwestern limits of Goshen and went toward Tanis,
in the northeast. Round about the little oasis were the dark circles
where the turf fires of many travelers had been. The merchants from
the Orient entering Egypt through the great wall of Rameses II, across
the eastern isthmus, passed this way going to Memphis. Here
Philistine, Damascene, Ninevite and Babylonian had halted; here
Egyptian, Bedouin, Arabian and the dweller of the desert had paused.
The earth about the well was always damp, and the top-most row of the
curb was worn smooth in hollows. This, therefore, was a point common
to native and alien, the home-keeping and the traveler, the faithful
and the unbeliever.

The strait of Egypt was sore and the aid of the gods essential. The
priests had seized upon the site as a place of prayers, placed a tablet
there, commanding them, and a soldier to see that the command was
obeyed.

The soldier was in cavalry dress of tunic and tasseled coif, with pike
and bull-hide shield and a light broadsword. He was no ordinary bearer
of arms. He walked like a man accustomed to command; he turned a cold
eye upon too-familiar wayfarers and startled them into silence by the
level blackness of his low brows. Wealth, beauty, age nor rank won
servility or superciliousness from him. The Egyptian soldier was not
obliged to cringe, and this one abode by the privilege.

He was a man of one attitude, one mood and few words. The Memnon might
as well have been expected to smile. The earliest riser found him
there; the latest night wanderer came upon him. When the day broke,
after the falling of the dreadful night, the brave or the thirsty who
ventured forth saw him at his post, silent, unastonished, unafraid.

Once only the soldier had been seen to flinch. Merenra, now nomarch of
Bubastis, but whilom commander over Israel at Pa-Ramesu, paused one
noon with his train at the well. The governor glanced at the soldier,
glanced again, shrugged his shoulders and rode away. The man-at-arms
winced, and often thereafter stood in abstracted contemplation of the
distance.

Just after sunrise on the second day following the passing of the
darkness, four Egyptians, lank, big-footed and brown, came from t