"Thou mayest fetch the lad and the maiden and set them in my presence. I would question them of this thing."

The woman bowed herself humbly before her lord and retired; presently she returned, leading by the hand a slight figure clad in the shapeless blue gown of an Egyptian peasant girl. Behind lagged with unwilling feet a half-grown lad.

Abu Ben Hesed fixed his piercing eyes upon the twain. "Thou mayest go till I shall call thee," he said to the woman. She lingered yet a moment to whisper, "The maid is blind, my lord!"

"Come hither, my son," said Ben Hesed after a short survey of his two guests, "and tell me how it befell that thou wast in the desert alone? Didst thou know," he added somewhat severely, "that thou wast brought to the borders of the encampment only that thou mightest be buried safe from the vultures? Had not one of the women discerned signs of life, when no other eye could see it, thou wouldst even now be sleeping beneath the sand."

The boy shuddered slightly; he opened his lips as though to speak, but the girl broke out impetuously:

"I alone am in fault," she cried. "It was I who would not listen to my brother when he said, \'we shall perish by the way if we go forth into the wilderness.\' It is true," she continued, turning to the lad, "folly dwelleth in the heart of a woman. I am minded to let thee beat me. I have deserved it."

Abu Ben Hesed smiled in the midst of his great beard, but the smile looked also out of his eyes, so that the lad was emboldened to speak.

"We fled before the face of an enemy," he said, looking squarely into the bright eyes of the man before him. "He would have made slaves of us in the city; death in the wilderness is better."

"Thou hast spoken a word of wisdom when thou hast so said, my son," cried Ben Hesed, his eyes flashing. "And who is it that would have caged the wild eaglets of the desert?"

"I know not," replied the lad. "I saw not the man, I only heard him speak. We were hidden in the abiding place of the dead; he would have shut us up there to perish, but Sechet smote him in the act and we left him on his face in the sand."

"Thou art Egyptian," said Ben Hesed after a pause. "How comes it that thou canst speak the tongue of the desert?"

"It was my mother\'s language; my father was a Greek."

"Where then are thy parents?"

"Dead, many years dead," said the boy looking down, and digging his bare toes into the hot sand. A single tear rolled swiftly down his brown cheek.

Ben Hesed saw it, his keen eyes softened. "No longer shalt thou look for a place to bide in safety from thine enemy," he said gently. "Where else should the young eaglets fly but to the nest of their kind? Thou art safe here, my children."

"Thou art good," replied the lad simply; "but--my sister is blind."

"I am not ignorant of that, my son," said Ben Hesed with a stately inclination of his head. "There is no need that she labor with her hands. Plenty dwells within the borders of my land, though it be not the plenty of Egypt; there is no lack of either flesh nor bread, nor yet of the milk of many herds. Thou art strong, son, and thou shalt labor as becomes a man; the maid shall dwell with the women. Go now in peace, and think of thy past distresses no more," and he waved his hand in token of dismissal.

"Come, Anat," said the lad, drawing her gently away. "It is impossible for us to repay thee thy goodness," he added, lingering wistfully. "Yet--"

"There is no need," said Ben Hesed, a slight shade of impatience in his tone. "Go now, my son will tell thee of thy duties."

"Nay, brother, do not hold me, I must tell him," cried Anat. "We cannot remain here."

"How now, damsel, art thou not satisfied with what thou hast received at my hands?" and Ben Hesed drew his bushy brows together with the look before which his wives, his children and his tribe were wont to tremble.

Seth also trembled. "I pray thee, my lord," he said, instinctively bowing himself almost to the ground, "that thou wilt not deal harshly with the maid, my sister. She is blind, and we were seeking a great magician who can heal blindness by a word. Thou knowest that it is an evil thing not to look upon the sun, and upon the stars, and upon the faces of one\'s kind."

Ben Hesed was silent for a moment. He looked keenly into the lad\'s flushed face. "It is in Egypt that the magicians dwell," he said at length. "Hast thou not heard how Moses, the mighty man of God, fetched out the Israelites with a strong hand from among the Egyptians; how he worked marvels also and great plagues with the rod of God, and the magicians of Egypt did so with their enchantments, save certain things which they could not do?"

"I know not Moses," said the boy, shaking his head. "Though I have heard many marvels of the great gods of the Greeks and Romans also. Yet is there no magician in Egypt who can cure blindness, for the land is full of it."

"And wherefore didst thou look for this magician in the wilderness?"

"The man said that he dwelt beyond the wilderness and that his name was Jesus," said Anat in her low, sweet voice. "I have not forgotten the name, Jesus. He healed the man, he will also............