"Nay, nay, Nechutes!" he cried. "Thou dost betray thyself. Never would Ta-meri have said anything so bald. Now, when she is moved to give me a honeyed fact, she laps it with delicate intimation, layer on layer like a lotus-bud. And only under the warm interpretation of my heart will it unfold and show the gold within."

Nechutes stifled a derisive groan, but the lady's color swept up over her face and made it like the dawn.

"Nay, now," she protested, "wherein art thou better than Nechutes, save in the manner of telling thy calumny? But, Kenkenes," she broke off, "thou art wasted in thy narrow realm. They need thy gallant tongue at court."

The young sculptor made soft eyes at her.

"If I were a courtier," he objected, "I must scatter my small eloquence among many beauties that I would liefer save for one."

She appropriated the compliment at once.

"Thou dost not hunger after even that opportunity," she pouted. "How long hath it been since the halls of my father's house knew thy steps?

A whole moon!"

"I feared that I should find Nechutes there," Kenkenes explained.

During this pretty joust the brows of the prospective cup-bearer had knitted blackly. The scowl was unpropitious.

"Thou mayest come freely now," he growled, "The way shall be clear."

The lady looked at him in mock fear.

"Come, Nechutes," the sculptor implored laughingly, "be gracious.

Being in highest favor, it behooves thee to be generous."

But the prospective cup-bearer refused to be placated. He rumbled an order to the slaves and they shouldered the litter.

Ta-meri made a pretty mouth at him, and turned again to Kenkenes.

"Nay, Kenkenes," she said. "It was mine to say that the way shall be clear--but I promise it."

She nodded a bright farewell to him, and they moved away. The sculptor, still smiling, continued down to the river.

At the landing he engaged one of the numerous small boats awaiting a pa.s.senger, and directed the clout-wearing boatman to drop down the stream.

Directly opposite his point of embarkation there were farm lands, fertile and moist, extending inland for a mile. But presently the frontier of the desert laid down a gray and yellow dead-line over which no domestic plant might strike its root and live.

But the arable tracts were velvet green with young grain, the verdant level broken here and there by a rustic's hut, under two or three close-standing palms. Even from the surface of the Nile the checkered appearance of the country, caused by the various kinds of products, was noticeable. Egypt was the most fertile land in the world.

However, as the light bari climbed and dipped on the little waves toward the north the Arabian hills began to approach the river. Their fronts became abrupt and showed the edges of stratum on stratum of white stone. About their bases were quant.i.ties of rubble and gray dust slanting against their sides in slides and drifts. Across the narrowing strip of fertility square cavities in rows showed themselves in the white face of the cliffs. The ruins of a number of squat hovels were barely discernible over the wheat.

"Set me down near Masaarah," Kenkenes said, "and wait for me." The boatman ducked his head respectfully and made toward the eastern sh.o.r.e.

He effected a landing at a bedding of masonry on which a wharf had once been built. The rock was now over-run with riotous marsh growth.

The quarries had not been worked for half a century. The thrifty husbandman had cultivated his narrow field within a few feet of the Nile, and the roadway that had once led from the ruined wharf toward the hills was obliterated by the grain.

Kenkenes alighted and struck through the wheat toward the pitted front of the cliffs. Before him was a narrow gorge that debouched into the great valley over a ledge of stone three feet in height. After much winding the ravine terminated in a wide pocket, a quarter of a mile inland. Exit from this cul-de-sac was possible toward the east by a steep slope leading to the top of one of the interior ridges of the desert. Kenkenes did not pause at the cl.u.s.ter of houses. The roofs had fallen in and the place was quite uninhabitable. But he leaped up into the little valley and followed it to its end. There he climbed the sharp declivity and turned back in the direction he had come, along the flank of the hill that formed the north wall of the gorge. The summit of the height was far above him, and the slope was covered with limestone ma.s.ses. There had been no frost nor rain to disturb the original rock-piling. Only the agencies of sand and wind had disarranged the distribution on which the builders of the earliest dynasty had looked. And this was weird, mysterious and labyrinthine.

At a spot where a great deal of broken rock enc.u.mbered the ground, Kenkenes unslung his wallet and tested the fragments with chisel and mallet. It was the same as the quarry product--magnesium limestone, white, fine, close-grained and easily worked. But it was broken in fragments too small for his purpose. Above him were fields of greater ma.s.ses.

"Now, I was born under a fortunate sign," he said aloud as he scaled the hillside; "but I fear those slabs are too long for a life-sized statue."

On reaching them he found that those blocks which appeared from a distance to weigh less than a ton, were irregular cubes ten feet high.

He grumbled his disappointment and climbed upon one to take a general survey of his stoneyard. At that moment his eyes fell on a block of proper dimensions under the very shadow of the great cube upon which he stood. It was in the path of the wind from the north and was buried half its height in sand.

Kenkenes leaped from his point of vantage with a cry of delight.

"Nay, now," he exclaimed; "where in this is divine disfavor?" He inspected his discovery, tried it for solidity of position and purity of texture. Its location was particularly favorable to secrecy.

It stood at the lower end of an aisle between great rocks. All view of it was cut off, save from that position taken by Kenkenes when he discovered it. A wall built between it and the north would bar the sand and form a nook, wholly closed on two sides and partly closed at each end by stones. All this made itself plain to the mind of the young sculptor at once. With a laugh of sheer content, he turned to retrace his steps and began to sing.

Then was the harsh desolation of the hills startled, the immediate echoes given unaccustomed sound to undulate in diminishing volume from one to another. He sang absently, but his preoccupation did not make his tones indifferent. For his voice was soft, full, organ-like, flexible, easy with illimitable lung-power and ineffable grace. When he ceased the silence fell, empty and barren, after that song's unaudienced splendor.

[1] Set--the war-G.o.d.

[2] Thebes.

[3] Amenti--The realm of Death.

[4] Tuat--The Egyptian Hades.

[5] Nomarch--governor of a civil division called a nome. A high office.

[6] Ma--The G.o.ddess of truth.

CHAPTER III

THE MESSENGER

Mentu returned from the session at the palace, uncommunicative and moody. When, after the evening meal, Kenkenes crossed the court to talk with him, he found the elder sculptor feeding a greedy flame in a brazier with the careful plans for the new temple to Set. Kenkenes retired noiselessly and saw his father no more that night.

The next day Mentu was bending over fresh sheets of papyrus, and when his son entered and stood beside him he raised his head defiantly.

"I have another royal obelisk to decorate," he said, fixing the young man with a steady eye, "of a surety,--without doubt,--inevitably,--for the thing is all but ready to be set up at On."

"I am glad of that," Kenkenes replied gravely. "Let me make clean copies of these which are complete."

He gathered up the sheets and took his place at the opposite table.

Then ensued a long silence, broken only by the loud and restless investigations of the omnipresent and unabashed ape.

At last the elder sculptor spoke.

"The eye of heaven must be unblinkingly upon the divine Meneptah," he observed, as though he had but thought aloud.