cut, promised him to commend him and his people to her father's favor,
and told him of her desire to proceed as soon as possible to the king's
camp under the protection of Pentaur, her future husband.

The mountain chief had gazed attentively at Pentaur and at Bent-Anat
while she spoke; then he said: "Thou, princess, art like the moon, and
thy companion is like the Sun-god Dusare. Besides Abocharabos," and he
struck his breast, "and his wife, I know no pair that are like you two.
I myself will conduct you to Hebron with some of my best men of war. But
haste will be necessary, for I must be back before the traitor who now
rules over Mizraim,--[The Semitic name of Egypt]--and who persecutes you,
can send fresh forces against us. Now you can go down again to the
tents, not a hen is missing. To-morrow before daybreak we will be off."

At the door of the hut Pentaur was greeted by the princess's companions.

The chamberlain looked at him not without anxious misgiving.

The king, when he departed, had, it is true, given him orders to obey
Bent-Anat in every particular, as if she were the queen herself; but her
choice of such a husband was a thing unheard of, and how would the king
take it?

Nefert rejoiced in the splendid person of the poet, and frequently
repeated that he was as like her dead uncle--the father of Paaker, the
chief-pioneer--as if he were his younger brother.

Uarda never wearied of contemplating him and her beloved princess. She
no longer looked upon him as a being of a higher order; but the happiness
of the noble pair seemed to her an embodied omen of happiness for