d put her
hand under it and into his palm, so that she could not leave him again.
She submitted reluctantly, but her fingers, lost in his warm clasp,
were cold and ill at ease. He felt their chill and released her to
slip about her shoulders the light woolen mantle he had worn. Her
apprehension lest he take her hand again was so evident that he
refrained, though he slackened his step and kept with her.

But she spoke no more until they were beside the outermost circle of
coals that had been a cooking fire for the camp. Here they met a man,
whom, by his superior dress, Kenkenes took to be the taskmaster. They
were almost upon him before he was seen.

"Rachel!" he exclaimed.

"Here am I," she answered, a little anxiously.

"Thou wast gone long--" he began.

The sculptor interposed.

"She hath done me a service and it was my pleasure to talk with her,"
he said complacently. "Chide her not."

The glow from the fire lighted the young man's face, and the
taskmaster, standing in deep shadow, scanned it sharply but did not
answer. Kenkenes turned and strode away down the valley.

Rachel snatched a thick sycamore club which had been left over in the
construction of the scaffold and ran after him. But the young sculptor
had disappeared in the dark.

"Kenkenes," she cried at last desperately. He answered immediately.

She slipped off the mantle.

"This, thy mantle," she said when he approached, "and this," thrusting
the club into his hands. "There is as much danger in the valley for
thee as for me."

And like a shadow she was gone.

As he hurried on again through the dense gloom of the ravine, the young
man thought long on the Israelite and her words. She had offered him
theories that peremptorily contradicted the accepted idea among
Egyptians, that Moses was inspired by a personal motive of revenge.
The argument put forth by his father began to show sundry weaknesses.
Furthermore Rachel's version gave him a much coveted opportunity to
slip from his shoulders the discomforting blame that had rested there
since he had heard that a miscarried letter might effect a national
disturbance. Much as the practical side of his nature sought to decry
the great Hebrew's motive, a sense of relief possessed him.

"I fear me, Kenkenes, thou durst not boast thyself an embroiler of
nations," he said to himself. "The Hebrew prince is a zealot, and
zealots have no fear for their lives. Truly those Israelites are an
un