these were the men of Israel, bearded and grave, stalwart and scantily clad.  They repaired a cable or fitted an ax-handle or mended a hoe.  But they were full of serious and absorbed discourse, for the great Hebrew, Moses, from the sheep-ranges of Midian, had been among them, showing them marvels of sorcery, preaching Jehovah and promising freedom.  The first high white light of dawn was breaking upon the century-long night of Israel.

Before one of the tents an old woman knelt beside a bed of live coals, turning a browning water-fowl upon a pointed stick.  She was a consummate cook, and the bird was fat and securely trussed.  Now and again she sprinkled a pinch of crude salt on the embers to suppress the odor of the burning drippings, and lifted the fowl out of the reach of the pale flames that leaped up thereafter.  Presently she removed the fowl and forked it off the spit into a capacious earthenware bowl near by.  Then, with green withes as tongs, she drew forth a round tile from under the coals and set it over the dish to complete the baking.  From another tile-platter at hand she took several round slices of durra bread and proceeded to toast them with much skill, tilting the hot tile and casting each browned slice in on the fowl as it was done.  When she had finished, she removed the cover and set the bowl on the large platter, protecting her hands from its heat with a fold of her habit.  With no little triumph and some difficulty she got upon her feet and carried the toothsome dish into her shelter, to place it beyond the reach of stealthy hands.  No such meal was cooked that morning, elsewhere, in Pa-Ramesu, except at the military headquarters on the knoll.

There was little inside the tent, except the meagerest essential furnishing.  A long amphora stood in a tamarisk rack in one corner; a linen napkin hung, pinned to the tent-cloth, over it; a glazed laver and a small box sat beside it.  A mat of braided reeds, the handiwork of the old Israelite, covered the naked earth.  This served as seat or table for the occupants.  Several wisps of straw were scattered about and a heap of it, over which a cotton cloak had been thrown, lay in one corner.

“Rachel,” the old woman said briskly.

Evidently some one slept under the straw, for the heap stirred.

“Rachel!” the old woman reiterated, drawing off the cloak.

Without any preliminary pushing away of the straw, a young girl sat up.  A little bewildered, she divested her head and shoulders of a frowsy straw thatch and stood erect, shaking it off from her single short garment.