While he was speaking, the impatient pawing of his spirited chariot-horses, restrained with difficulty by three footmen, reminded him that we were delaying at Raamses when we ought to be on our way back to On. "Come, Sesostris, let us get upon the chariot and return, for I promised to dine with my mother and the Lord Prince Mœris to-day; and it is already past noon by the shadow of that obelisk." We stood upon the silver-chased chariot, and taking the leopard-skin reins in his left hand, he made a sign to his footmen, who, springing away from the heads of the fretting and frothing horses, let them fly. Away, like the wind, we swept the plain in front of the treasure-city; along the plateau where had stood the palace and gardens of Joseph, the lord of Egypt; past the ruined strangers' fountain, where I had talked with the venerable Ben Isaac and his handsome son; past a well beside which Jacob had his great house, during the seventeen years he lived in Goshen, the ruins of which were visible a little ways off to the east. On we rolled, preceded and followed by the fleet-footed runners, across the plain of the Hebrew brick-makers, who still bent to their labors. Women and children, with dark fine eyes and raven hair, gathering straw by the wayside or in the stubble-fields, were passed in vast numbers. Crossing an open space, I saw before me a black mass on the ground, which, as we advanced, proved to be a crowd of vultures or carrion eagles, that slowly and reluctantly moved aside at our coming; and the next moment our horses shied at the dead body of a man, around which they had been gathered feasting upon the flesh. The long beard and dark hair, the coarse blue loin-cloth, and the pile of bricks at his side, told the whole tale. It was an emaciated Hebrew, who had perished on the road-side under his burden. I did not look at Remeses. I knew that he saw and felt. He reined up, and sternly commanded two of his footmen to remain and bury the body.