d without
guiding the horse, urged the animal forward.

Kenkenes was relying on chance for direction.

Confused and unready the horse awaited the intelligent touch on the
bridle. It did not come. He flung up his head and smelt the wind.
Nervously he stamped and trod in one place, breathing loudly in protest.

The low voice of his rider continued to urge him. Perhaps the wind
from Goshen brought the smell of unblighted pastures. Whatever the
reason, the horse turned, with uncertainty in his step and took the
road eastward to Pa-Ramesu.

Having chosen, he went confidently, and as he was not halted and was
young and swift, he increased his pace to a long run.

Meanwhile far to the north the little litter was borne toward Tanis.
And Atsu, the warrior, did not move his eyes from the distant point
where it had disappeared over the horizon.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE TRAITORS

The morning of the second day after the lifting of the darkness lay
golden over Egypt, blue-shadowed before the houses and trees to the
west and shimmering and illusory toward the east. A slow-moving,
fragmentary cloud had gathered in the zenith just after dawn and for
many minutes over the northern part of Goshen there had been a
perpendicular downpour of illuminated rain. Now the sky was as clear
and blue as a sapphire and the little wind was burdened with odorous
scents from the clean-washed pastures of Israel.

Seti had crossed the border into Goshen at daybreak and was now well
into the grazing-lands, yet scintillating with the rain. The hoofs of
his fat little horse were patched with wet sand of the roadway and
there was no dust on the prince's modest raiment. Behind the youth
plodded two heavy-headed, limp-eared sumpter-mules, driven by a
big-boned black.

Seti was not far from his destination, an obscure village of
image-makers directly south of Tanis and situated on the northern
border of Goshen. The same region that furnished clay to Israel for
Egypt's bricks afforded material for terra-cotta statuettes.

Ahead of him were fields with clouds of sheep upon the uplands and
cattle standing under the shade of dom-palms. Here and there hovels
with thatches no higher than a man's head, or low tents, dark with long
use, and lifted at one side, stood in a setting of green. About them
were orderly and productive gardens. Nowhere was any sign of the
desolation that prevailed over Egypt.

Seti looked upon the beautiful prosper