thing was as impossible as it was indispensable. It seemed that he had
met complete bafflement.

He took up his tools and returned to Memphis. But each succeeding
morning found him in the desert again, desperately hopeful--each
succeeding evening, in the city disheartened and silent.

So it followed for several days.

On the sixth of January the festival in honor of the return of Isis
from Phenicia was celebrated in Memphis. Kenkenes left the revel in
mid-afternoon and crossed the Nile to the hills. He found no content
away from his block of stone--no happiness before it. But he wandered
back to the seclusion of the niche that he might be moody and sad of
eye in all security.

The stone-pits were deserted. The festivities in Memphis had extended
their holiday to the dreary camp at Masaarah. Kenkenes climbed up to
his retreat and remained there only a little time. The unhewn rock
mocked him.

He descended through the gorge and found that the Hebrews were but
nominally idle. A rope-walk had been constructed and the men were
twisting cables of tough fiber. The Egyptians lounged in the long
shadows of the late afternoon and directed the work with no effort and
little concern. The young sculptor overlooked the scene as long as it
interested him and continued down the valley toward the Nile.

Presently a little company of Hebrew children approached, their bare
feet making velvety sounds in the silence of the ravine. Each balanced