many of the throng began to plunder and destroy Nun's deserted
home, men and women came to report that not a soul was to be found in
any of the neighboring dwellings. Others told of cats cowering on the
deserted hearthstones, of slaughtered cattle and shattered furniture;
but at last the furious avengers dragged out a Hebrew with his family
and a half-witted grey-haired woman found hidden among some straw.
The crone, amid imbecile laughter, said her people had made themselves
hoarse calling her, but Meliela was too wise to walk on and on as they
meant to do; besides her feet were too tender, and she had not even a
pair of shoes.

The man, a frightfully ugly Jew, whom few of his own race would have
pitied, protested, sometimes with a humility akin to fawning, sometimes
with the insolence which was a trait of his character, that he had
nothing to do with the god of lies in whose name the seducer Moses had
led away his people to ruin; he himself, his wife, and his child had
always been on friendly terms with the Egyptians. Indeed, many knew him,
he was a money-lender and when the rest of his nation had set forth
on their pilgrimage, he had concealed himself, hoping to pursue his
dishonest calling and sustain no loss.

Some of his debtors, however, were among the infuriated populace, though
even without their presence he was a doomed man; for he was the first
person on whom the excited mob could show that they were resolved upon
revenge. Rushing upon him with savage yells, the lifeless bodies of the
luckless wretch and his family were soon strewn over the ground. Nobody
knew who had done this first bloody deed; too many had dashed forward at
once.

Not a few others who had remained in the houses and huts also fell
victims to the people's thirst for vengeance, though many had time to
escape, and while streams of blood were flowing, axes were wielded, and
walls and doors were battered down with beams and posts to efface the
abodes of the detested race from the earth.

The burning embers brought by some frantic women were extinguished
and trampled out; the more prudent warned them of the peril that would
menace their own homes and the whole city of Tanis, if the strangers'
quarter should be fired.

So the Hebrews' dwellings escaped the flames; but as the sun mounted
higher dense clouds of white dust shrouded the abodes they had forsaken,
and where, only yesterday, thousands of people had possessed happy
homes and numerou