white to fiery
scarlet and, after a brief, painful convulsion, she sank back.
Death laid his hand on the loving heart, and her features gained the
expression of a child whose mother has forgiven its fault and clasped it
to her heart ere it fell asleep.

The old man, weeping, closed the dead girl's eyes. Ephraim, deeply
moved, kissed the closed lids, and after a short silence Nun said:

"I do not like to enquire about our fate beyond the grave, which Moses
himself does not know; but whoever has lived so that his or her memory
is tenderly cherished in the souls of loved ones, has, I think, done the
utmost possible to secure a future existence. We will remember this
dead girl in our most sacred hours. Let us do for her corpse what we
promised, and then set forth to show the man for whom Kasana sacrificed
what she most valued that we do not love him less than this Egyptian
woman."

CHAPTER XXIV.

The prisoners of state who were being transported to the mines made slow
progress. Even the experienced captain of the guards had never had
a more toilsome trip or one more full of annoyances, obstacles, and
mishaps.

One of his moles, Ephraim, had escaped; he had lost his faithful hounds,
and after his troop had been terrified and drenched by a storm such as
scarcely occurred in these desert regions once in five years, a second
had burst the next evening--the one which brought destruction on
Pharaoh's army--and this had been still more violent and lasting.

The storm had delayed the march and, after the last cloud-burst, several
convicts and guards had been attacked by fever owing to their wet
night-quarters in the open air. The Egyptian asses, too, who were unused
to rain, had suffered and some of the best had been left on the road.

Finally they had been obliged to bury two dead prisoners, and place
three who were dangerously ill on the remaining asses; and the other
prisoners were laden with the stores hitherto carried by the beasts of
burden. This was the first time such a thing had happened during the
leader's service of five and twenty years, and he expected severe
reproofs.

All these things exerted a baneful influence on the disposition of
the man, who was usually reputed one of the kindest-hearted of his
companions in office; and Joshua, the accomplice of the bold lad whose
flight was associated with the other vexations, suffered most sorely
from his ill-humor.

Perhaps the irritated man would have dealt