Now while I did these things the overseer and his companions beat their heads upon the ground and prayed for mercy, being cowards as the cruel always are.  His Highness answered them never a word, but only looked at them with cold eyes, and I noted that his face which was so kind had grown terrible.  So those men thought also, for that night they ran away to Syria, leaving their families and all their goods behind them, nor were they ever seen again in Egypt.

When I had finished writing the Prince turned and, walking to where the chariot waited, bade the driver cross the canal by a bridge there was here.  We drove on a while in silence, following a track which ran between the cultivated land and the desert.  At length I pointed to the sinking sun and asked if it were not time to return.

“Why?” replied the Prince.  “The sun dies, but there rises the full moon to give us light, and what have we to fear with swords at our sides and her Highness Userti’s mail beneath our robes?  Oh!  Ana, I am weary of men with their cruelties and shouts and strugglings, and I find this wilderness a place of rest, for in it I seem to draw nearer to my own soul and the Heaven whence it came, or so I hope.”

“Your Highness is fortunate to have a soul to which he cares to draw near; it is not so with all of us;” I answered laughing, for I sought to change the current of his thoughts by provoking argument of a sort that he loved.

Just then, however, the horses, which were not of the best, came to a halt on a slope of heavy sand.  Nor would Seti allow the driver to flog them, but commanded him to let them rest a space.  While they did so we descended from the chariot and walked up the desert rise, he leaning on my arm.  As we reached its crest we heard sobs and a soft voice speaking on the further side.  Who it was that spoke and sobbed we could not see, because of a line of tamarisk shrubs which once had been a fence.

“More cruelty, or at least more sorrow,” whispered Seti.  “Let us look.”

So we crept to the tamarisks, and peeping through their feathery tops, saw a very sweet sight in the pure rays of that desert moon.  There, not five paces away, stood a woman clad in white, young and shapely in form.  Her face we could not see because it was turned from us, also the long dark hair which streamed about her shoulders hid it.  She was praying aloud, speaking now in Hebrew, of which both of us knew something, and now in Egyptian, as does one who is accustomed to think in either tongue, and stopping from time to time to sob.

“O God of my people,” she said, “send me succour and bring me safe home, that Thy child may not be left alone in the wilderness to become the prey of wild beasts, or of men who are worse than beasts.”

Then she sobbed, knelt down on a great bundle which I saw was stubble straw, and again began to pray.  This time it was in Egyptian, as though she feared lest the Hebrew should be overheard and understood.