the soldier who had first governed the quarries.  The young man watched him excitedly but there was no display of tyranny or even authority in the taskmaster’s manner.  They talked, and by the motion of the man’s hand Kenkenes fancied that he described something growing near the Nile.  Presently they walked together toward the outlet of the valley.  The taskmaster leaped down the ledge and, turning, put up his arms and lifted Rachel down.  It was plain that something more than courtesy inspired the act, for the man’s hands fell reluctantly.  Kenkenes faced sharply about and proceeded up the hill to his statue with a queer discomfort tugging at his heart.

That night in his effort to bring forth the coveted expression in his drawings of Athor, Kenkenes all but satisfied himself.

The next day, without any apparent cause, he went back to the niche in the desert, stayed without purpose, and departed when no tangible reason urged him.  When the day declined he climbed down the front of the hill and crossed the narrow field toward his boat, which was buried in the rank vegetation of the water’s edge.  At the Nile he noted, a little distance up the river, a familiar figure among the reeds.  For a moment he hesitated and then rambled through the riotous growth in that direction.  As he drew near, Rachel raised herself from a search in a thicket of herbs, her arms full of them and her face a little flushed.

“Idler!” said Kenkenes.

“Nay,” she answered with a smile, “I am at work—­learned work.”

“Gathering witch-weeds for an incantation, sorceress?”

“Not so.  I am hunting herbs to make simples for the sick.”

“Of a truth?  Then never before now have I craved for an illness that I might select my leech.”

Again she smiled and made a sheaf of the herbs, preparatory to binding it.  The bundle was unruly, and several of the plants dropped.  She bent to pick them up and others fell.  Kenkenes came to her rescue and gathered them all into his large grasp.

“Now, while I hold it,” he suggested.

With the most gracious self-possession she smoothed out the fiber, put it twice, thrice about the sheaf and knotted it, her fingers, cool and moist after their contact with the marsh sedge, touching the sculptor’s more than once.

“There!  I thank thee.”

“Are there any sick in the camp?”

“Only those who have been blinded by the stone-dust.  But I prepare for sickness during health.”

“A wise provision.  Would we might prepare for sorrow during contentment.”

“We may lay up comfort for us against the coming of misfortune.”

“How?”

“In choosing friends,” she answered.

His mind went back to the scene of that morning.  Did she speak of the taskmaster?

“Thou hast found it so?” he asked.

“Thou hast said.”  She added no more, though the sculptor was eager for an example.