whose birth he scorned, much as he liked
and esteemed his character. He could not refrain from uttering an
oath under his breath, but his answer to the prophet was more calm and
sensible than the latter had anticipated. If Kasana was so possessed
by demons that this stranger infatuated her, let her have her will. But
Hosea had not yet sued for her.

"By the red god Seth, and his seventy companions," he added wrathfully,
"neither you, nor any one shall induce me to offer my daughter, who
has twenty suitors, to a man who terms himself our friend, yet finds no
leisure to greet us in our own house! To keep fast hold of the lad is
another thing, I will see to that."

CHAPTER XI.

The midnight heavens, decked with countless stars, spanned with their
cloudless azure vault the flat plains of the eastern Delta and the city
of Succoth, called by the Egyptians, from their sanctuary, the place of
the god Tum, or Pithom.

The March night was drawing toward its end, pallid mists floated over
the canal, the work of Hebrew bondmen which, as far as the eye could
reach, intersected the plain, watering the fields and pastures along its
course.

Eastward and southward the sky was shrouded by dense veils of mist that
rose from the large lakes and from the narrow estuaries that ran far up
into the isthmus. The hot and dusty desert wind, which the day before
had swept over the parched grass and the tents and houses of Succoth,
had subsided at nightfall; and the cool atmosphere which in March, even
in Egypt, precedes the approach of dawn, made itself felt.

Whoever had formerly entered, between midnight and morning, the humble
frontier hamlet with its shepherd tents, wretched hovels of Nile mud,
and by no means handsome farms and dwellings, would scarcely
have recognized it now. Even the one noticeable building in the
place--besides the stately temple of the sungod Turn--the large
fortified store-house, presented at this hour an unfamiliar aspect.
Its long white-washed walls, it is true, glimmered through the gloom as
distinctly as ever, but instead of towering--as usual at this time--mute
and lifeless above the slumbering town--the most active bustle was going
on within and around it. It was intended also as a defense against the
predatory hordes of the Shasu,

[Bedouins, who dwelt as nomads in the desert adjacent to Egypt, now
regarded as part of Asia.]

who had made a circuit around the fortified works on the isthmus,