Lentil-broth and hard bread in abundance, but a very small quantity of water was given to them before they started; then they set out through the gorge, which grew hotter and hotter, and through ravines where they could pass only one by one.  Every now and then it seemed as if the path came to an end, but each time it found an outlet, and went on—­as endless as the torment of the wayfarers.

Mighty walls of rock composed the view, looking as if they were formed of angular masses of hewn stone piled up in rows; and of all the miners one, and one only, had eyes for these curious structures of the ever-various hand of Nature.

This one had broader shoulders than his companions, and his burden Weighed on him comparatively lightly.  “In this solitude,” thought he, “which repels man, and forbids his passing his life here, the Chnemu, the laborers who form the world, have spared themselves the trouble of filling up the seams, and rounding off the corners.  How is it that Man should have dedicated this hideous land—­in which even the human heart seems to be hardened against all pity—­to the merciful Hathor?  Perhaps because it so sorely stands in need of the joy and peace which the loving goddess alone can bestow.”

“Keep the line, Huni!” shouted a driver.

The man thus addressed, closed up to the next man, the panting leech Nebsecht.  We know the other stronger prisoner.  It is Pentaur, who had been entered as Huni on the lists of mine-laborers, and was called by that name.  The file moved on; at every step the ascent grew more rugged.  Red and black fragments of stone, broken as small as if by the hand of man, lay in great heaps, or strewed the path which led up the almost perpendicular cliff by imperceptible degrees.  Here another gorge opened before them, and this time there seemed to be no outlet.

“Load the asses less!” cried the captain of the escort to the prisoners.  Then he turned to the soldiers, and ordered them, when the beasts were eased, to put the extra burthens on the men.  Putting forth their utmost strength, the overloaded men labored up the steep and hardly distinguishable mountain path.

The man in front of Pentaur, a lean old man, when half way up the hill-side, fell in a heap under his load, and a driver, who in a narrow defile could not reach the bearers, threw a stone at him to urge him to a renewed effort.

The old man cried out at the blow, and at the cry—­the paraschites stricken down with stones—­his own struggle with the mob—­and the appearance of Bent Anat flashed into Pentaur’s memory.  Pity and a sense of his own healthy vigor prompted him to energy; he hastily snatched the sack from the shoulders of the old man, threw it over his own, helped up the fallen wretch, and finally men and beasts succeeded in mounting the rocky wall.