Twice during three months had the dread servant of the Palace come and driven off their best like sheep to the slaughter.

The brave, the stalwart, the bread-winners, were gone; and yet the tax-gatherer would come and press for every impost--on the onion-field, the date-palm, the dourha-field, and the clump of sugar-cane, as though the young men, the toilers, were still there.

The old and infirm, the children, the women, must now double and treble their labour.

The old men must go to the corvee, and mend the banks of the Nile for the Prince and his pashas, providing their own food, their own tools, their own housing, if housing there would be--if it was more than sleeping under a bush by the riverside, or crawling into a hole in the ground, their yeleks their clothes by day, their only covering at night.
They sat like men without hope, yet with the proud, bitter mien of those who had known good and had lost it, had seen content and now were desolate.
Presently one--a lad--the youngest of them, lifted up his voice and began to chant a recitative, while another took a small drum and beat it in unison.

He was but just recovered from an illness, or he had gone also in chains to die for he knew not what, leaving behind without hope all that he loved: "How has the cloud fallen, and the leaf withered on the tree, The lemon-tree, that standeth by the door.
The melon and the date have gone bitter to the taste, The weevil, it has eaten at the core The core of my heart, the mildew findeth it.
My music, it is but the drip of tears, The garner empty standeth, the oven hath no fire, Night filleth me with fears.
O Nile that floweth deeply, hast thou not heard his voice?
His footsteps hast thou covered with thy flood?
He was as one who lifteth up the yoke, He was as one who taketh off the chain, As one who sheltereth from the rain, As one who scattereth bread to the pigeons flying.
His purse was at his side, his mantle was for me, For any who passeth were his mantle and his purse, And now like a gourd is he withered from our eyes.
His friendship, it was like a shady wood Whither has he gone ?--Who shall speak for us?
Who shall save us from the kourbash and the stripes?
Who shall proclaim us in the palace?
Who shall contend for us in the gate?
The sakkia turneth no more; the oxen they are gone; The young go forth in chains, the old waken in the night, They waken and weep, for the wheel turns backward, And the dark days are come again upon us-- Will he return no more?
His friendship was like a shady wood, O Nile that floweth deeply, hast thou not heard his voice?
Hast thou covered up his footsteps with thy flood?
The core of my heart, the mildew findeth it!" Another-an old man-took up the strain, as the drum kept time to the beat of the voice with its undulating call and refrain: "When his footsteps were among us there was peace; War entered not the village, nor the call of war.