While they stood thus, Deborah, exhausted and praying, staggered into the inclosure.
"Rachel!" she panted. "The serving-men—thou art pursued!" The fat courier, purple of countenance and breathing hard, appeared in the opening. Rachel shrank against Kenkenes and Deborah dropped on her knees between the pair and the servitor.
"Out of the way, hag!" the man puffed. "Let me at yon slave. Out!" He struck at Deborah with a short mace but Kenkenes caught his arm and thrust him aside.
"Go, go back to the camp," he said to the old woman. "No harm shall befall Rachel." Raising her, he put her behind him, and advanced toward the courier.
"Hast thou words with me?" he said coolly. "What wilt thou?"
"The girl. Give her up!"
"Nay, but thou art peremptory. What wilt thou with her?"
"For the harem of the Pharaoh's chief adviser," the man retorted.
The blood in Kenkenes' veins seemed to become molten; flashes of fierce light blinded him and his sinews hardened into iron. He bounded forward and his fingers buried themselves in soft and heated flesh.
The first glimmer of reason through his murderous insanity was the consciousness of a rain of blows upon his head and shoulders, and a blackening face settling back to the earth before him.