Westward, the direction toward which his eyes were turned, lay the necropolis and the ruined strangers’ quarter.  But a few hours ago he had led his troops through the ruins around which the ravens were circling and past his father’s devastated home.

Silently, as duty required, he marched on.  Not until he halted to seek quarters for the soldiers did he hear from Hornecht, the captain of the archers, what had happened during the night.  He listened silently, without the quiver of an eye-lash, or a word of questioning, until his men had pitched their tents.  He had but just gone to rest when a Hebrew maiden, spite of the menaces of the guard, made her way in to implore him, in the name of Eliab, one of the oldest slaves of his family, to go with her to the old man, her grandfather.  The latter, whose weakness prevented journeying, had been left behind, and directly after the departure of the Hebrews he and his wife had been carried on an ass to the little but near the harbor, which generous Nun, his master, had bestowed on the faithful slave.

The grand-daughter had been left to care for the feeble pair, and now the old servant’s heart yearned for one more sight of his lord’s first-born son whom, when a child, he had carried in his arms.  He had charged the girl to tell Hosea that Nun had promised his people that his son would abandon the Egyptians and cleave to his own race.  The tribe of Ephraim, nay the whole Hebrew nation had hailed these tidings with the utmost joy.  Eliab would give him fuller details; she herself had been well nigh dazed with weeping and anxiety.  He would earn the richest blessings if he would only follow her.

The soldier realized at once that he must fulfil this desire, but he was obliged to defer his visit to the old slave until the nest morning.  The messenger, however, even in her haste, had told him many incidents she had seen herself or heard from others.

At last she left him.  He rekindled the fire and, so long as the flames burned brightly, his gaze was bent with a gloomy, thoughtful expression upon the west.  Not till they had devoured the fuel and merely flickered with a faint bluish light around the charred embers did he fix his eyes on the whirling sparks.  And the longer he did so, the deeper, the more unconquerable became the conflict in his soul, whose every energy, but yesterday, had been bent upon a single glorious goal.

The war against the Libyan rebels had detained him eighteen months from his home, and he had seen ten crescent moons grow full since any news had reached him of his kindred.  A few weeks before he had been ordered to return, and when to-day he approached nearer and nearer to the obelisks towering above Tanis, the city of Rameses, his heart had pulsed with as much joy and hopefulness as if the man of thirty were once more a boy.