"And thou didst well, little one!" said the boy. "It matters not what hath befallen him, the gods helped thee. But the other--there were two, saidst thou? He will return. We must get us away from here and at once."
"Where shall we go?" said Anat plaintively. "We are even as the birds that flee before the hunter, only to fall at last into his hand."
"Not so, little one; the pursued eaglets flee away into the desert. So also will we. I know of a secure resting-place, and thou shalt not again stay alone."
"Shall we go now?"
"Yes, now. When I shall have gathered together our possessions; but they be few, it will not take long."
The lad rose to his feet with a sigh, and looked out and away from their lofty eyrie. Far below them lay a floor of shining blue-green, the fertile plains of the Nile, shadowed here and there with groups of clustered palm trees. Through the midst of these plains rolled the sacred river, like a flood of gold. On either side of it rose the white walls and strange many-colored towers of the city of Memphis, all transfigured in the shining mist of the setting sun. And beyond trooped the grim procession of the pyramids, solemn sentinels on the borders of a desert which the Egyptians thought to be boundless, behind whose golden rim, they believed, lay the regions of the departed.
CHAPTER II.
GOOD TIDINGS OUT OF THE DESERT.
"I hear some one coming."
"How can that be, Anat? I see no one."