as if blown by a
wind. A motion of his hand sent a nervous start over the hall. The
nearest courtiers seemed prepared to crouch. Meneptah did not win a
glance from his court. Every eye, wide and expectant, was fixed upon
the Israelite.

The pale and troubled queen strove in vain. Meneptah thrust her aside
and shaking his clenched hand at the solitary figure before him, ended
the audience in a voice violent with fury.

"Get thee from me! Take heed to thyself; see my face no more. For in
that day thou seest my face, thou shalt die!"

After the speech, the silence fell, deepened, grew ominous. None
breathed, and the overwrought nerves of the court reached the limit of
endurance.

Then Moses answered. His tones were quiet, his voice full of a calm
more terrifying than an outburst had been.

"Thou hast spoken well," he said. "I will see thy face no more."

Another breathless silence and he turned, the courtiers shrinking from
his way, and passed out of the hall.

At the doors, his eyes fell upon Seti. He made no sign of surprise.
Indeed his glance seemed to indicate that he expected the prince. He
raised his hand and extended it for a moment over the boy's head, and
went forth.

The strength went from Seti's limbs, the passion from his brain, and
when Rameses with grim purpose in his face beckoned him, he obeyed
meekly and prostrated himself before the angry king.

[1] Zoan--The Hebrew name for Tanis.

CHAPTER XXXIX

BEFORE EGYPT'S THRONE

The distance by highway between Memphis and Tanis was eighty miles, a
little more than two days' journey by horseback.

Masanath had required two weeks to accomplish that distance. She refused
to travel except in the cool of the morning and of the afternoon; if she
felt the fatigue of an hour's journey, she rested a day at the next town;
she consulted astrologers, and moved forward only under propitious signs;
she insisted on following the Nile until she was opposite Tanis, instead
of taking the highway at On and continuing across the Delta.

The most of her following walked, and she proceeded at the pace of her
plodding servants.

She spoke of her freedom as though she went to meet doom; she gazed on
the sorry fields and pastures of Egypt as though the four walls of a
prison were soon to shut out heaven and earth from her eyes.

She was now within ten miles of Tanis, fourteen days after her departure
from Memphis.

Four solemn Ethiopians bore