At a well-known hostelry on the road, where he met many soldiers and among them several military commanders with whom he was well acquainted, he at last allowed his horse and himself a little rest and food; and as he rode on refreshed active life asserted its claims; for as far as the gate of the city of Rameses he passed bands of soldiers, and learned that they were ordered to join the cohorts he had himself brought from Libya.

At last he rode into the capital and as he passed the temple of Amon he heard loud lamentations, though he had learned on the way that the plague had ceased.  What many a sign told him was confirmed at last by some passing guards—­the first prophet and high-priest of Amon, the grey-haired Rui, had died in the ninety-eighth year of his life.  Bai, the second prophet, who had so warmly protested his friendship and gratitude to Hosea, had now become Rui’s successor and was high-priest and judge, keeper of the seals and treasurer, in short, the most powerful man in the realm.

CHAPTER XVII.

“Help of Jehovah!” murmured a state-prisoner, laden with heavy chains, five days later, smiling bitterly as, with forty companions in misfortune, he was led through the gate of victory in Tanis toward the east.

The mines in the Sinai peninsula, where more convict labor was needed, were the goal of these unfortunate men.

The prisoner’s smile lingered a short time, then drawing up his muscular frame, his bearded lips murmured:  “Strong and steadfast!” and as if he desired to transmit the support he had himself found he whispered to the youth marching at his side:  “Courage, Ephraim, courage!  Don’t gaze down at the dust, but upward, whatever may come.”

“Silence in the ranks!” shouted one of the armed Libyan guards, who accompanied the convicts, to the older prisoner, raising his whip with a significant gesture.  The man thus threatened was Joshua, and his companion in suffering Ephraim, who had been sentenced to share his fate.

What this was every child in Egypt knew, for “May I be sent to the mines!” was one of the most terrible oaths of the common people, and no prisoner’s lot was half so hard as that of the convicted state-criminals.

A series of the most terrible humiliations and tortures awaited them.  The vigor of the robust was broken by unmitigated toil; the exhausted were forced to execute tasks so far beyond their strength that they soon found the eternal rest for which their tortured souls longed.  To be sent to the mines meant to be doomed to a slow, torturing death; yet life is so dear to men that it was considered a milder punishment to be dragged to forced labor in the mines than to be delivered up to the executioner.

Joshua’s encouraging words had little effect upon Ephraim; but when, a few minutes later, a chariot shaded by an umbrella, passed the prisoners, a chariot in which a slender woman of aristocratic bearing stood beside a matron behind the driver, he turned with a hasty movement and gazed after the equipage with sparkling eyes till it vanished in the dust of the road.