“A murrain on the bugs,” he said.  “We shall have a creepy night of it.  Let us bottle this treasure and lay the mattress out of their reach on the sarcophagus.  Endure them a while, Deborah, till we make thee a refuge.”

He set the lamp in the opening from the outer into the inner crypt and entered the second chamber.  Rachel followed him, and the old Israelite watched them with brilliant eyes.

Kenkenes swept the jewels as if they had been almonds into an empty amphora and returned it to the rack.  The mattress he laid upon the broad top of the sarcophagus.

“A line of oil run around the coffin will keep the insects away,” Rachel ventured.  Kenkenes returned to the outer chamber for the jar of oil; but Rachel took it from him.

“Let me be thy handmaid,” she said softly.

He did not protest, and she reentered the crypt.

“Luckily the mattress is large enough for the two of you,” Kenkenes observed to Deborah, “but it will be hard sleeping.”

“The Hebrews are not spoiled with couches of down,” she replied.

“There are enough of the wrappings in yonder to take off the hardness, but even with the matting over them they will be gruesome things to sleep upon.  They would bewitch your dreams.  But mayhap ye will not suffer from one night’s discomfort.”

“Where go we to-morrow?”

Kenkenes did not answer immediately.  Another plan for Rachel’s security had been growing in his mind, and his heart leaped at the prospect of its acceptance by her.

“There is a large boat here, and we might go to On,” he began at last.  “There is one way possible to save Rachel from this man as long as I live, and I would she were to be persuaded into accepting the conditions.”

“Name them and let me judge.”

He hesitated for proper words and his cheeks flushed.  Deborah looked at him with comprehension in her gaze.

“Rachel is not blind to my love for her, and thou, too, art discerning.  Yet I would declare myself.  I love Rachel, and I would take her to wife.  Then, not even the Pharaoh could take her from me by law.”

Deborah raised herself with difficulty, and after peering into the inner chamber to see where Rachel was, approached him softly.

“Thou lovest Rachel.  Aye, that is a tale I have heard oftener than I have fingers to count upon.  From the first men of her tribe I have heard it, from the best of Egypt and the worst.  But she kept her heart and stayed by my side.  Now thou comest, young, comely, gifted with fair speech and full of fervor.  Thou lovest as she would be loved, and her heart goes out to thee, even as thou wouldst have it—­in love.”

Kenkenes’ face glowed and his fine eyes shone with joy.