Then he turned to his companions, and said:  “Did you see the pretty girl there, in front of the tent?”

“It is nothing to us!” answered the man he addressed.  “She belongs to the princess’s train.  She has been three weeks here on a visit to the holy shrine of Hathor.”

“She must have committed some heavy sin,” replied the other.  “If she were one of us, she would have been set to sift sand in the diggings, or grind colors, and not be living here in a gilt tent.  Where is our red-beard?”

Uarda’s father had lingered a little behind the party, for the girl had signed to him, and exchanged a few words with him.

“Have you still an eye for the fair ones?” asked the youngest of the drivers when he rejoined the gang.

“She is a waiting maid of the princess,” replied the soldier not without embarrassment.  “To-morrow morning we are to carry a letter from her to the scribe of the mines, and if we encamp in the neighborhood she will send us some wine for carrying it.”

“The old red-beard scents wine as a fox scents a goose.  Let us encamp here; one never knows what may be picked up among the Mentu, and the superintendent said we were to encamp outside the oasis.  Put down your sacks, men!  Here there is fresh water, and perhaps a few dates and sweet Manna for you to eat with it.

["Man” is the name still given by the Bedouins of Sinai to the sweet gum which exudes from the Tamarix mannifera.  It is the result of the puncture of an insect, and occurs chiefly in May.  By many it is supposed to be the Manna of the Bible.]

But keep the peace, you two quarrelsome fellows—­Huni and Nebsecht.”

Bent-Anat’s journey to the Emerald-Hathor was long since ended.  As far as Keft she had sailed down the Nile with her escort, from thence she had crossed the desert by easy marches, and she had been obliged to wait a full week in the port on the Red Sea, which was chiefly inhabited by Phoenicians, for a ship which had finally brought her to the little seaport of Pharan.  From Pharan she had crossed the mountains to the oasis, where the sanctuary she was to visit stood on the northern side.

The old priests, who conducted the service of the Goddess, had received the daughter of Rameses with respect, and undertook to restore her to cleanness by degrees with the help of the water from the mountain-stream which watered the palm-grove of the Amalekites, of incense-burning, of pious sentences, and of a hundred other ceremonies.  At last the Goddess declared herself satisfied, and Bent-Anat wished to start for the north and join her father, but the commander of the escort, a grey-headed Ethiopian field officer—­who had been promoted to a high grade by Ani—­explained to the Chamberlain that he had orders to detain the princess in the oasis until her departure was authorized by the Regent himself.

Bent-Anat now hoped for the support of her father, for her brother Rameri, if no accident had occurred to him, might arrive any day.  But in vain.