The prisoners had at first marched through a hilly region, then climbed
upward, with a long mountain chain in view, and finally reached a desert
country from which truncated sandstone cones rose singly from the rocky
ground.

On the fifth evening they encamped near a large mountain which Nature
seemed to have piled up from flat layers of stone and, as the sun of the
sixth day rose, they turned into a side valley leading to the mines in
the province of Bech.

During the first few days they had been overtaken by a messenger from the
king's silver-house; but on the other hand they had met several little
bands bearing to Egypt malachite, turquoise, and copper, as well as the
green glass made at the mines.

Among those whom they met at the entrance of the cross-valley into which
they turned on the last morning was a married couple on their way
homeward, after having received a pardon from the king. The captain of
the guards pointed them out to encourage his exhausted moles, but the
spectacle produced the opposite effect; for the tangled locks of the man,
who had scarcely passed his thirtieth year, were grey, his tall figure
was bowed and emaciated, and his naked back was covered with scars and
bleeding wales; the wife, who had shared his misery, was blind. She sat
cowering on an ass, in the dull torpor of insanity, and though the
passing of the convicts made a startling interruption to the silence of
the wilderness, and her hearing had remained keen, she paid no heed, but
continued to stare indifferently into vacancy.

The sight of the hapless pair placed Hosea's own terrible future before