The watcher could not hear the whispered words exchanged between the degraded chief and the lady, but her humble manner and bearing led him to suppose that it was she who had brought the proud warrior to his ruin.  Ah, these women!  And the fettered youth!  The looks he fixed upon the slender figure were ardent enough to scorch her veil.  But patience!  Mighty Father Amon!  His moles were going to a school where people learned modesty!

Now the lady had removed her veil.  She was a beautiful woman!  It must be hard to part from such a sweetheart.  And now she was weeping.

The rude warder’s heart grew as soft as his office permitted; but he would fain have raised his scourge against the older prisoner; for was it not a shame to have such a sweetheart and stand there like a stone?

At first the wretch did not even hold out his hand to the woman who evidently loved him, while he, the watcher, would gladly have witnessed both a kiss and an embrace.

Or was this beauty the prisoner’s wife who had betrayed him?  No, no!  How kindly he was now gazing at her.  That was the manner of a father speaking to his child; but his mole was probably too young to have such a daughter.  A mystery!  But he felt no anxiety concerning its solution; during the march he had the power to make the most reserved convict an open book.

Yet not only the rude gaoler, but anyone would have marvelled what had brought this beautiful, aristocratic woman, in the grey light of dawn, out on the highway to meet the hapless man loaded with chains.

In sooth, nothing would have induced Kasana to take this step save the torturing dread of being scorned and execrated as a base traitress by the man whom she loved.  A terrible destiny awaited him, and her vivid imagination had shown her Joshua in the mines, languishing, disheartened, drooping, dying, always with a curse upon her on his lips.

On the evening of, the day Ephraim bad been brought to the house, shivering with the chill caused by burning fever, and half stifled with the dust of the road, her father lead told her that in the youthful Hebrew they possessed a hostage to compel Hosea to return to Tanis and submit to the wishes of the prophet Bai, with whom she knew her father was leagued in a secret conspiracy.  He also confided to her that not only great distinction and high offices, but a marriage with herself had been arrranged to bind Hosea to the Egyptians and to a cause from which the chief of the archers expected the greatest blessings for himself, his house, and his whole country.

These tidings had filled her heart with joyous hope of a long desired happiness, and she confessed it to the prisoner with drooping head amid floods of tears, by the little wayside temple; for he was now forever lost to her, and though he did not return the love she had lavished on him from his childhood, he must not hate and condemn her without having heard her story.