nds gleefully.

Treason, murder, hypocrisy, fraud, shameful abuse of the most sacred
feelings, nay all that was evil must serve Siptah to steal the throne,
and though Kasana had wrung her hands and shed tears when she heard
that he meant to remove Pharaoh from his path, she grew calmer after
the prince had represented that her own father had approved of his
arrangements for the deliverance of Egypt from the hand of the king, her
destroyer.

The letter from the prince's mother to Pharaoh, the mother who urged her
own son to the most atrocious crimes, was the last thing Ephraim heard;
for it roused in the young Hebrew, who was wont to consider nothing
purer and more sacred than the bonds which united parents and children,
such fierce indignation, that he raised his fist threateningly and,
springing up, opened his lips in muttered invective.

He did not hear that Kasana made the prince swear that, if he attained
the sovereign power, he would grant her first request. It should cost
him neither money nor lands, and only give her the right to exercise
mercy where her heart demanded it; for things were in store which must
challenge the wrath of the gods and he must leave her to soothe it.

Ephraim could not endure to see or hear more of these abominable things.

For the first time he felt how great a danger he ran of being dragged
into this marsh and becoming a lost, evil man; but never, he thought,
would he have been so corrupt, so worthless, as this prince. His uncle's
words again returned to his mind, and he now raised his head proudly
and arched his chest as if to assure himself of his own unbroken vigor,
saying meanwhile, with a long breath, that he was of too much worth to
ruin himself for the sake of a wicked woman, even though, like Kasana,
she was the fairest and most bewitching under the sun.

Away, away from the neighborhood of this net, which threatened to
entangle him in murder and every deed of infamy.

Resolved to seek his people, he turned toward the gate of the camp, but
after a few hasty steps paused, and a glance at the sky showed him
that it was the second hour past midnight. Every surrounding object
was buried in silence save that from the neighboring Dens of the royal
steeds, came the sound of the rattle of a chain, or of the stamp of a
stallion's hoof.

If he risked escaping from the camp now, he could not fail to be seen
and stopped. Prudence commanded him to curb his impatience and, as he
glan