d securely trussed. Now and
again she sprinkled a pinch of crude salt on the embers to suppress the
odor of the burning drippings, and lifted the fowl out of the reach of
the pale flames that leaped up thereafter. Presently she removed the
fowl and forked it off the spit into a capacious earthenware bowl near
by. Then, with green withes as tongs, she drew forth a round tile from
under the coals and set it over the dish to complete the baking. From
another tile-platter at hand she took several round slices of durra
bread and proceeded to toast them with much skill, tilting the hot tile
and casting each browned slice in on the fowl as it was done. When she
had finished, she removed the cover and set the bowl on the large
platter, protecting her hands from its heat with a fold of her habit.
With no little triumph and some difficulty she got upon her feet and
carried the toothsome dish into her shelter, to place it beyond the
reach of stealthy hands. No such meal was cooked that morning,
elsewhere, in Pa-Ramesu, except at the military headquarters on the
knoll.

There was little inside the tent, except the meagerest essential
furnishing. A long amphora stood in a tamarisk rack in one corner; a
linen napkin hung, pinned to the tent-cloth, over it; a glazed laver
and a small box sat beside it. A mat of braided reeds, the handiwork
of the old Israelite, covered the naked earth. This served as seat or
table for the occupants. Several wisps of straw were scattered about
and a heap of it, over which a cotton cloak had been thrown, lay in one
corner.

"Rachel," the old woman said briskly.

Evidently some one slept under the straw, for the heap stirred.

"Rachel!" the old woman reiterated, drawing off the cloak.

Without any preliminary pushing away of the straw, a young girl sat up.
A little bewildered, she divested her head and shoulders of a frowsy
straw thatch and stood erect, shaking it off from her single short
garment.

She was not more than sixteen years old. Above medium height and of
nobler proportions than the typical woman of the race, her figure was
remarkable for its symmetry and utter grace. The stamp of the
countenance was purely Semitic, except that she was distinguished, most
wondrously in color, from her kind. Her sleep had left its exquisite
heaviness on eyes of the tenderest blue, and the luxuriant hair she
pushed back from her face was a fleece of gold. Hers was that rare
complexion that