the eager and expectant whinnyings of a multitude of war-horses.

While the army broke its fast and prepared to move the king stood in
the open space before his tent, with his eyes on the east. The Red Sea
lay there beyond the uplifted line of desert sand, and it was the
birthplace of many mists and unpropitious signs.

Would the sun look upon the king through a veil, or openly? Would he
smile upon the purposes of the Pharaoh?

There were striations, watery and colorless, in the lower slopes of the
morning sky, and these were taking on the light of dawn without its
hues. Long wind-blown streaks crossed the zenith from east to west and
the setting stars were blurred. The moon had worn a narrowing circlet
in the night. Meneptah shook his head.

Suddenly some one in the ranks of the royal guard exclaimed to a mate:

"Look! Look to the southeast!"

Meneptah turned his eyes in that direction, as though he had been
commanded. There, above the spot where he had guessed the Israelites
to be, a straight and mighty column of vapor extended up, up into the
smoky blue of the sky. The tortuous shapes of the striations across
the zenith indicated that there was great wind at that height, but the
column did not move or change its form. It was further distinguished
from the clouds over the dawn, by a fine amber light upon it, deepening
to gold in its shadows. So vivid the tint, that steady contemplation
was necessary to assure the beholders that it was not fire, climbing in
and out of the pillar's heart. Egypt's skies were rarely clouded and
never by such a formation as this.

Meneptah turned his troubled eyes hurriedly toward the east. He must
not miss the sunrise. At that moment, unheralded, the disk of the sun
shot above the horizon as if blown from a crater of the
under-world--blurred, milky-white, without warmth.

He turned away and faced Nechutes, bending before him; behind the
cup-bearer, a stately stranger--Kenkenes.

"A message for thee, O Son of Ptah," Nechutes said.

At a sign from the king, the messenger came forward, knelt and
delivered the scroll. The king looked at the writing on the wrapping.

"From whom dost thou bring this?" he asked.

"From Jambres, the mystic, O Son of Ptah."

"Ah!" It was the tone of one who has his surmises proved. "Now, what
is contained herein?"

Kenkenes took it that the inquiry called for an answer.

"A warning, O King."

"How dost thou know?"

"The purpo