Lifting her to her feet, the ape attending them, he went toward the Nile, hand in hand with Rachel, his love all untold. CHAPTER XX THE TREASURE CAVE The sudden night had just fallen, and there was an incomplete moon in the west. But already the desert was full of feeble shadows and silver interspaces, and all that tense silence of evening upon unpeopled localities. Kenkenes stood upon the top of a huge monolith, listening. Below, with only her face in the faint moonlight, was Rachel, looking up to him. Anubis, oppressed by the voiceless expectancy of the two young people, crouched at his master's feet. For a while there was only the ringing turmoil of his own quickened blood in the young man's ears. But presently, up from the southern slope, rose the sound he had heard some minutes before--a long, quavering note, ending in a high eery wail. Kenkenes was familiar with the screams of wild beasts, and he knew the irreconcilable differences between them and the human voice. Instantly he sent back across the hollow a strong reply that the startled echoes repeated again and again. Almost immediately the first cry was repeated, but a desperate power had entered into it. Kenkenes dropped from his point of vantage. "Some one calleth, of a surety," he said, "and by the voice, it is a woman." "It is Deborah come up from the camp to seek for me!" Rachel exclaimed. "I doubt not. But the gods are surely with her, to fend the beasts from her in this savage place. It is well we came this way." With all the haste possible on the rough slope, they descended. The ground was familiar to Kenkenes, for the niche was near the foot of the declivity. Half-way down he called again, and the answer came up from the hiding-place of Athor. In another moment they were within and beside the prostrate form of the old Israelite. Rachel dropped on her knees, crying out in her solicitude. Her words were in the soft language of her own people and unintelligible to Kenkenes, but her voice trembled with concern. The old woman answered soothingly and at some length. The narrative was frequently broken by low exclamations from Rachel, and at its end the girl turned to Kenkenes with a sob of anger. "The Lord God break them in pieces and His fury be upon them!" she cried. "They set upon her and beat her and left her to the jackals!" "Set consume them!" Kenkenes responded wrathfully. "How came they upon you? Did you not return to camp?" "Nay, the mother heart in me would not suffer me to desert Rachel. I stayed without this place, and ye outstripped me when ye fled. After a time the fat servitor, rousing out of his swoon, came forth from here, and another, who had been lurking in the rocks, joined him, and the pair, in searching for you, discovered me and beat me with maces, leaving me for dead." After a grim silence, broken only by the low weeping of Rachel, Kenkenes bade her continue.