Returning to the niche, he took up the matting with its weight of chipped stone, and went down through the dark to the line of rocks opposite the quarries.  There he permitted the rubble to slide with a mixture of earth, like a natural displacement, into the talus, of a similar nature, at the base of the cliff.  The matting he shook and laid aside.  It would serve for a bed in the tomb that night.

Then he destroyed the north wall.  In the four months of its existence the sand had banked against it more than half its height.  Each stone removed in the dismantling was carried away to a new place, until the whole fortification was, as once it had been, scattered up and down the slope.  The light, dry sand he pitched with his wooden shovel against the great cube until it all lay where the wind would have piled it had no second wall stood in its way.  By dawn the strong breeze from the north would cover every footprint and shovel-mark to a level once more.  He went again to the line of rocks and threw the shovel with a sure aim and a strong arm into the quarries across the valley.  To-morrow it would seem that an Israelite had forgotten one of his tools.

The work was done.

With an ache in his heart, Kenkenes returned to Deborah and Rachel.

“The shelter for us is in the cliff to the north, near Toora,” he began immediately.  “It is a tomb, but others before us have partaken of the dead’s hospitality.” [1]

“How am I to reach it?” Deborah asked.  “Is the place far?”

“A good hour’s journey, but we go by water.  Still, we must walk to the Nile.”

“That I can not do,” the old woman declared.

“Nay, but I can carry you,” Kenkenes replied, bending over her.  She shrank away from him.

“Thou hast forgotten,” she protested.

“Not so,” he insisted stoutly.  Taking her up, he settled her on one strong arm against his breast.  The free hand he extended to Rachel, who had taken the matting, and together they went laboriously down the steep front of the hill.  They proceeded cautiously, watching before and behind them lest they be surprised.

He had covered his boat well with the tangle of sedge and marsh-vines, and after a long space of search, he found it.

Once again he lifted Deborah and laid her in the bottom of the boat.  With its triple burden, the bari sank low in the water, but Kenkenes wielded the oars carefully.  The faint moonlight showed him the way.  Now and then a red glimmer across the grain marked the location of a farmer’s hut, but there was no other sign of life.  Even at the Memphian shore there was little activity.

When the line of cultivation ended Kenkenes knew he was in the precincts of the Marsh of the Discontented Soul.  He rowed across what he believed to be one-half of its width and drew into the reeds.  The sound and movement awoke many creatures, which hurried away in the dark, and something slid off into the river with a splash.  The lapping of the ripples sounded like a drinking beast.  Kenkenes put a bold foot on the soggy sand and stepped out.  Rachel followed him with bated breath.  Anubis unceremoniously mounted his shoulder.  He dragged the bari far up on the shore, once more lifted Deborah and started up the warm sand.