“Nay, let it pass, Nechutes,” he said in a strained voice.  “Thou and I are friends.  But lead me to the king, I pray thee.”

“To the king?” the cup-bearer repeated doubtfully.  “The king sleeps.  Will thine interests go to wreck if thou bidest till dawn?”

“I carry him a message,” Kenkenes explained.

“A message!”

“Even so.  Hand hither a torch.”

A soldier went and returned with a flaming knot of pitch.  In the wavering light of the flambeau, Nechutes read the address on the linen scroll.

“The king could not read by the night-lights,” he said after a little.  “Much weeping is not helpful to such feeble eyes as his.  Wait till dawn.  My tent is empty and my bed is soft.  Wait till daybreak as my guest.”

“Where is Har-hat?”

“In his tent, yonder,” pointing to a party-colored pavilion.

“Dost thou keep an unsleeping eye on the Pharaoh?”

“By night, aye.”

Kenkenes had a thought to accept the cup-bearer’s hospitality.  He knew that the expected climax would follow immediately upon the king’s perusal of the message, and that the nature of that climax depended upon himself.  He needed mental vigor and bodily freshness to make effective the work before him.  His cogitations decided him.

“Let the unhappy king sleep, then, Nechutes; far be it from me to bring him back to the memory of his sorrows.  Lead me to thy shelter, if thou wilt.”

With satisfaction in his manner Nechutes conducted his guest into a comfortably furnished tent, and showed him a mattress overlaid with sheeting of fine linen.

“Shame that thou must defer this soft sleeping till the noisy and glaring hours of the day,” Kenkenes observed as he fell on the bed.

“By this time to-morrow night, I may content myself in a bed of sand with a covering of hyena-fending stones,” the cup-bearer muttered.

“Comfort thee, Nechutes,” the artist said sententiously, “But do thou raise me from this ere daybreak, even if thou must take a persuasive spear to me.”

So saying, he fell asleep at once.

After some little employment among his effects, the cup-bearer came to the bedside on his way back to the king’s tent, and bent over his guest.

“Holy Isis! but I am glad he died not!” he said to himself.  “Aye, and there be many who are as glad as I am.  Dear Ta-meri!  She will be rejoiced, and Hotep.  What a great happiness for the old murket—­” he paused and clasped his hands together.  “He is Mentu’s only son!  Now, in the name of the mystery-dealing Hathors, how came it that he died not with the first-born?” After a silence he muttered aloud:  “Gods! the army would barter its mummy to have the secret of his safety, this day!”

At the first glimmerings of the dawn, the melody of many winded trumpets arose over the encampment of the Egyptians.  Now the notes were near and clear, now afar and tremulous; again, deep and sonorous; now, full and rich, and yet again, fine and sweet.  There is a pathos in the call of a war-trumpet that no frivolous rendering can subdue—­it has sung so long at the death of men and nations.