In one of the narrow ways between the tents an old woman, very bowed and voluminously clad, prepared a great hamper of lentils and another of papyrus root for the noonday meal.  One or two children sitting on the earth beside her rendered her assistance, and a third kept the turf fire glowing under a huge bubbling caldron.  Kenkenes passed through the camp by this narrow way and paused to look with much curiosity at the ancient Israelite.  Never had he seen any old person so active or a slave so wrapped in covering.  He hoped she would lift her head that he might see her face; and even as he wished, she pierced him with a look which, from her midnight eyes, seemed like lightning from a thunder-cloud.

“Gods!” he exclaimed as he retreated up the slope behind the camp.  And a moment later he continued his soliloquy in a voice that struggled between mirth and amazement:  “Have I never seen an Israelite until I beheld these twain, the Lady Miriam and that bent dart of lightning in the valley?  If these be Israelites I never saw one before.  If those cowed shepherds that have strayed now and again out of Goshen be Hebrews, then these are not.  And the gods shield me from the disfavor of them, be they slaves or sibyls!”

When he reached his block of stone he unrolled his load of equipments and set to work without delay.  He was remote from any possible interruption from Memphis, and the slaves in the gorge and in the stone-pits had no opportunity to come upon his sacrilege in idle hours.  They would be held like prisoners within the limits of the quarries.  His sense of security had been strengthened by the renewed activities in Masaarah.

With a shovel of tamarisk he cleared the slab of its drift of sand.  He found that the block broadened at the base and was separate from the sheet of rock on which it stood.  Among his supplies was a roll of reed matting, and with this cut into proper lengths, he carpeted a considerable space about the block.  Precaution rather than luxury had prompted this procedure, since the chipped stone falling on the covering could be carried cleanly and at once from the spot.

Pausing long enough to eat a thin slice of white bread and gazelle-meat, and to drink a draft from the porous and ever cooling water bottle, he turned to the protection and concealment of his statue.

The place was strewn with tolerably regular fragments, and the building of a segment of wall to the north at the edge of the matting required more time than strength or skill.  He built solidly against the penetrative sand, and as high as his head.  The early afternoon blazed upon him and passed into the mellower hours of the later day before he had finished.  He hid his shovel and two cylindrical billets of wood, such as were used to roll great weights, under the edge of his reed carpet, and his preparations were complete.  He wiped his brow, congratulating himself on the snugness of his retreat and the auspicious beginning of his transgression.