speak with thy father," Rachel
suggested. The prospect of talking once again to those he had left
behind was one too full of pleasure for the young Egyptian to receive
calmly. Hurriedly he despatched one of his serving men to the
Amalekite to bid him await a message. But Rachel called the messenger
back.

"Tell the Amalekite that thou comest from an Egyptian noble. For such
thy master is, and this chieftain is more willing to take command from
Egypt than from Israel."

The servant in his enthusiasm and the importance of his mission told
the Amalekite that he came from a prince of Egypt.

The chieftain was a youth who had just succeeded his father over his
people and was on his way to Memphis bearing tribute to Meneptah. To
this tributary nation Egypt was remote, splendid and full of glamour.
The name was synonymous of the world and all the glories thereof, and
particularly had it appealed to the active imagination of this youth.
He had seen many Egyptians, but they were naked prisoners laboring in
the mines of Sinai, or overseers or scribes or the ancient exile who
was governor of the province,--and surely these were not representative
of the land.

Now he was to get a glance at real Egypt.

In the early hours of the dawn a follower came to his pallet and told
him in awed tones that the prince was without. Tremulous with
pleasurable trepidation, he went out into the misty daybreak twilight
of the open. And there he met an imperial stranger who towered over
him as a palm over a shrub. At a single glance the Amalekite saw that
there was a circlet of gold about the brow, that the face was fine and
that the garments swept the sands. All this was significant, but when
the stranger delivered him two rolls, one addressed to the chief of the
royal scribes of the Pharaoh, the other to the royal murket, and paid
him with a jewel, the Amalekite, convinced and satisfied, prostrated
himself.

But we may not know what the youth thought when he found that there
were few in all Egypt like this princely stranger.

After these writings came, with all fidelity, to the hands of those who
loved him in Egypt, silence fell between them and Kenkenes.

Meneptah erected no more monuments after the eighth year of his reign,
for in that year Mentu, the murket, died. None could fill his place,
since to his name was attached the title "the Incomparable," as
befitted the artist of that great Pharaoh, likewise titled, who had so