The
military standard was raised upon its roof and a scribe, making entries
on a roll of linen, sat cross-legged on a mat before the door. In one
of the narrow ways between the tents an old woman, very bowed and
voluminously clad, prepared a great hamper of lentils and another of
papyrus root for the noonday meal. One or two children sitting on the
earth beside her rendered her assistance, and a third kept the turf
fire glowing under a huge bubbling caldron. Kenkenes passed through
the camp by this narrow way and paused to look with much curiosity at
the ancient Israelite. Never had he seen any old person so active or a
slave so wrapped in covering. He hoped she would lift her head that he
might see her face; and even as he wished, she pierced him with a look
which, from her midnight eyes, seemed like lightning from a
thunder-cloud.

"Gods!" he exclaimed as he retreated up the slope behind the camp. And
a moment later he continued his soliloquy in a voice that struggled
between mirth and amazement: "Have I never seen an Israelite until I
beheld these twain, the Lady Miriam and that bent dart of lightning in
the valley? If these be Israelites I never saw one before. If those
cowed shepherds that have strayed now and again out of Goshen be
Hebrews, then these are not. And the gods shield me from the disfavor
of them, be they slaves or sibyls!"

When he reached his block of stone he unrolled his load of equipments
and set to work without delay. He was remote from any possible
interruption from Memphis, and the slaves in the gorge and in the
stone-pits had no opportunity to come upon his sacrilege in idle hours.
They would be held like prisoners within the limits of the quarries.
His sense of security had been strengthened by the renewed activities
in Masaarah.

With a shovel of tamarisk he cleared the slab of its drift of sand. He
found that the block broadened at the base and was separate from the
sheet of rock on which it stood. Among his supplies was a roll of reed
matting, and with this cut into proper lengths, he carpeted a
considerable space about the block. Precaution rather than luxury had
prompted this procedure, since the chipped stone falling on the
covering could be carried cleanly and at once from the spot.

Pausing long enough to eat a thin slice of white bread and
gazelle-meat, and to drink a draft from the porous and ever cooling
water bottle, he turned to the protection and concealment of