her presence, and she knew and approved the course to be pursued; for she
was full of dread of the power of the Hebrew Mesu, called by his own
people Moses, and of his God, who had brought such terrible woe on the
Egyptians. She had other children to lose, and she had known Mesu from
her childhood, and was well aware how highly the great Rameses, her
husband's father and predecessor, had prized the wisdom of this stranger
who had been reared with his own sons.

Ah, if it were only possible to conciliate this man. But Mesu had
departed with the Israelites, and she knew his iron will and had learned
that the terrible prophet was armed, not alone against Pharaoh's threats,
but also against her own fervent entreaties.

She was now expecting Hosea. He, the son of Nun, the foremost man of all
the Hebrews in Tanis, would succeed, if any one could, in carrying out
the plan which she and her royal husband deemed best for all parties,--a
plan supported also by Rui, the hoary high-priest and first prophet of
Amon, the head of the whole Egyptian priesthood, who held the offices of
chief judge, chief treasurer, and viceroy of the kingdom, and had
followed the court from Thebes to Tanis.

Ere going to the audience hall, she had been twining wreaths for her
loved dead and the lotus flowers, larkspurs, mallow and willow-leaves,
from which she was to weave them, had been brought there by her desire.
They were lying on a small table and in her lap; but she felt paralyzed,
and the hand she stretched toward them refused to obey her will.

Rui, the first prophet of Amon, an aged man long past his ninetieth
birthday, squatted on a mat at Pharaoh's left hand. A pair of bright
eyes, shaded by bushy white brows, glittered in his brown face--seamed