him as if in a mirror, and for the first time he groaned aloud and
covered his face with his hands.

The captain of the guards perceived this and, touched by the horror of
the man whose resolution had hitherto seemed peerless, called to him:

"They don't all come home like that, no indeed!"

"Because they are even worse off," he thought. "But the poor wights
needn't know it beforehand. The next time I come this way I'll ask for
Hosea; I shall want to know what has become of this bull of a man. The
strongest and the most resolute succumb the most quickly."

Then, like a driver urging an unharnessed team forward, he swung the lash
over the prisoners, but without touching them, and pointing to a column
of smoke which rose behind a cliff at the right of the road, he
exclaimed:

"There are the smelting furnaces! We shall reach our destination at
noon. There will be no lack of fire to cook lentils, and doubtless you
may have a bit of mutton, too; for we celebrate to-day the birth of the
good god, the son of the sun; may life, health, and prosperity be his!"

For the next half-hour their road led between lofty cliffs through the
dry bed of a river, down which, after the last rains, a deep mountain
torrent had poured to the valley; but now only a few pools still
remained.

After the melancholy procession had passed around a steep mountain whose
summit was crowned with a small Egyptian temple of Hathor and a number of