“They are accustomed,” he added, “to fight against the cowardly dogs of Kush; but we are men, and we can fight like the lions of our wilds.  If we are outnumbered we hide like the goats in clefts of the rocks.”

Bent-Anat, who was pleased with the daring man, his flashing eyes, his aquiline nose, and his brown face which bore the mark of a bloody sword-cut, promised him to commend him and his people to her father’s favor, and told him of her desire to proceed as soon as possible to the king’s camp under the protection of Pentaur, her future husband.

The mountain chief had gazed attentively at Pentaur and at Bent-Anat while she spoke; then he said:  “Thou, princess, art like the moon, and thy companion is like the Sun-god Dusare.  Besides Abocharabos,” and he struck his breast, “and his wife, I know no pair that are like you two.  I myself will conduct you to Hebron with some of my best men of war.  But haste will be necessary, for I must be back before the traitor who now rules over Mizraim,—­[The Semitic name of Egypt]—­and who persecutes you, can send fresh forces against us.  Now you can go down again to the tents, not a hen is missing.  To-morrow before daybreak we will be off.”

At the door of the hut Pentaur was greeted by the princess’s companions.

The chamberlain looked at him not without anxious misgiving.

The king, when he departed, had, it is true, given him orders to obey Bent-Anat in every particular, as if she were the queen herself; but her choice of such a husband was a thing unheard of, and how would the king take it?

Nefert rejoiced in the splendid person of the poet, and frequently repeated that he was as like her dead uncle—­the father of Paaker, the chief-pioneer—­as if he were his younger brother.

Uarda never wearied of contemplating him and her beloved princess.  She no longer looked upon him as a being of a higher order; but the happiness of the noble pair seemed to her an embodied omen of happiness for Nefert’s love—­perhaps too for her own.

Nebsecht kept modestly in the background.  The headache, from which he had long been suffering, had disappeared in the fresh mountain air.  When Pentaur offered him his hand he exclaimed: 

“Here is an end to all my jokes and abuse!  A strange thing is this fate of men.  Henceforth I shall always have the worst of it in any dispute with you, for all the discords of your life have been very prettily resolved by the great master of harmony, to whom you pray.”

“You speak almost as if you were sorry; but every thing will turn out happily for you too.”