the smallest part to my own idiosyncrasy, if such indeed there be
existing in my empty breast.  You look straight onwards as I do, but in
you each idea is transfigured, for in your soul invisible shaping powers
are at work, which set the crooked straight, clothe the commonplace with
charm, the repulsive with beauty.  You are a poet, an artist; I only seek
for truth."

"Only?"  said Pentaur, "it is just on account of that effort that I
esteem you so highly, and, as you already know, I also desire nothing but
the truth."

"I know, I know," said the physician nodding, "but our ways run side by
side without ever touching, and our final goal is the reading of a
riddle, of which there are many solutions.  You believe yourself to have
found the right one, and perhaps none exists."

"Then let us content ourselves with the nearest and the most beautiful,"
said Pentaur.

"The most beautiful?"  cried Nebsecht indignantly.  "Is that monster,
whom you call God, beautiful--the giant who for ever regenerates himself
that he may devour himself again?  God is the All, you say, who suffices
to himself.  Eternal he is and shall be, because all that goes forth from
him is absorbed by him again, and the great niggard bestows no grain of
sand, no ray of light, no breath of wind, without reclaiming it for his
household, which is ruled by no design, no reason, no goodness, but by a
tyrannical necessity, whose slave he himself is.  The coward hides behind
the cloud of incomprehensibility, and can be revealed only by himself--I
would I could strip him of the veil!  Thus I see the thing that you call
God!"

"A ghastly picture," said Pentaur, "because you forget that we recognize
reason to be the essence of the All, the penetrating and moving power of
the universe which is manifested in the harmonious working together of
its parts, and in ourselves also, since we are formed out of its
substance, and inspired with its soul."

"Is the warfare of life in any way reasonable?"  asked Nebsecht.  "Is
this eternal destruction in order to build up again especially well-
designed and wise?  And with this introduction of reason into the All,
you provide yourself with a self-devised ruler, who terribly resembles
the gracious masters and mistresses that you exhibit to the people."

"Only apparently," answered Pentaur, "only because that which transcends
sense is communicable through the medium of the senses alone.  When God
manifests himself as the wisdom of the world, we call him 'the Word,'
'He, who covers his limbs with names,' as the sacred Text expresses
itself, is the power which gives to things their distinctive forms; the
scarabaeus, 'which enters life as its own son' reminds us of the ever
self-renewing creative power which causes you to call our merciful and
benevolent God a monster, but which you can deny as little as you can the
happy choice of the type; for, as you know, there are only male scarabei,
and this animal reproduces itself."

Nebsecht smiled.  "If all the doctrines of the mysteries," he said,
"have no more truth than this happily chosen image, they are in a bad
way.  These beetles have for years been my friends and companions.
I know their family life, and I can assure you that there are males and
females amongst them as amongst cats, apes, and human beings.  Your 'good
God' I do not know, and what I least comprehend in thinking it over
quietly is the circumstance that you distinguish a good and evil
principle in the world.  If the All is indeed God, if God as the
scriptures teach, is goodness, and if besides him is nothing at all,
where is a place to be found for evil?"

"You talk like a school-boy," said Pentaur indignantly.  "All that is,
is good and reasonable in itself, but the infinite One, who prescribes
his own laws and his own paths, grants to the finite its continuance
through continual renewal, and in the changing forms of the finite
progresses for evermore.  What we call evil, darkness, wickedness, is in
itself divine, good, reasonable, and clear; but it appears in another
light to our clouded minds, because we perceive the way only and not the
goal, the details only, and not the whole.  Even so, superficial
listeners blame the music, in which a discord is heard, which the harper
has only evoked from the strings that his hearers may more deeply feel
the purity of the succeeding harmony; even so, a fool blames the painter
who has colored his board with black, and does not wait for the
completion of the picture which shall be thrown into clearer relief by
the dark background; even so, a child chides the noble tree, whose fruit
rots, that a new life may spring up from its kernel.  Apparent evil is
but an antechamber to higher bliss, as every sunset is but veiled by
night, and will soon show itself again as the red dawn of a new day."

"How convincing all that sounds!"  answered the physician, "all, even the
terrible, wins charm from your lips; but I could invert your proposition,
and declare that it is evil that rules the world, and sometimes gives us
one drop of sweet content, in order that we may more keenly feel the
bitterness of life.  You see harmony and goodness in everything.  I have
observed that passion awakens life, that all existence is a conflict,
that one being devours another."

"And do you not feel the beauty of visible creation, and does not the
immutable law in everything fill you with admiration and humility?"

"For beauty," replied Nebsecht, "I have never sought; the organ is
somehow wanting in me to understand it of myself, though I willingly
allow you to mediate between us.  But of law in nature I fully appreciate
the worth, for that is the veritable soul of the universe.  You call the
One 'Temt,' that is to say the total--the unity which is reached by the
addition of many units; and that pleases me, for the elements of the
universe and the powers which prescribe the paths of life are strictly
defined by measure and number--but irrespective of beauty or
benevolence."

"Such views," cried Pentaur troubled, "are the result of your strange
studies.  You kill and destroy, in order, as you yourself say, to come
upon the track of the secrets of life.  Look out upon nature, develop the
faculty which you declare to be wanting, in you, and the beauty of
creation will teach you without my assistance that you are praying to a
false god."

"I do not pray," said Nebsecht, "for the law which moves the world is as
little affected by prayers as the current of the sands in your hour-
glass.  Who tells you that I do not seek to come upon the track of the
first beginning of things?  I proved to you just now that I know more
about the origin of Scarabei than you do.  I have killed many an animal,
not only to study its organism, but also to investigate how it has built
up its form.  But precisely in this work my organ for beauty has become
blunt rather than keen.  I tell you that the beginning of things is not
more attractive to contemplate than their death and decomposition."

Pentaur looked at the physician enquiringly.

"I also for once," continued Nebsecht, "will speak in figures.  Look at
this wine, how pure it is, how fragrant; and yet it was trodden from the
grape by the brawny feet of the vintagers.  And those full ears of corn!
They gleam golden yellow, and will yield us snow-white meal when they are
ground, and yet they grew from a rotting seed.  Lately you were praising
to me the beauty of the great Hall of Columns nearly completed in the
Temple of Amon over yonder in Thebes.

[Begun by Rameses I. continued by Seti I., completed by Rameses II.
The remains of this immense hall, with its 134 columns, have not
their equal in the world.]

How posterity will admire it!  I saw that Hall arise.  There lay masses
of freestone in wild confusion, dust in heaps that took away my breath,
and three months since I was sent over there, because above a hundred
workmen engaged in stone-polishing under the burning sun had been beaten
to death.  Were I a poet like you, I would show you a hundred similar
pictures, in which you would not find much beauty.  In the meantime, we
have enough to do in observing the existing order of things, and
investigating the laws by which it is governed."

"I have never clearly understood your efforts, and have difficulty in
comprehending why you did not turn to the science of the haruspices,"
said Pentaur.  "Do you then believe that the changing, and--owing to the
conditions by which they are surrounded--the dependent life of plants and
animals is governed by law, rule, and numbers like the movement of the
stars?"

"What a question!  Is the strong and mighty hand, which compels yonder
heavenly bodies to roll onward in their carefully-appointed orbits, not
delicate enough to prescribe the conditions of the flight of the bird,
and the beating of the human heart?"

"There we are again with the heart," said the poet smiling, "are you any
nearer your aim?"

The physician became very grave.  "Perhaps tomorrow even," he said,
"I may have what I need.  You have your palette there with red and black
color, and a writing reed.  May I use this sheet of papyrus?"

"Of course; but first tell me .  .  .  ."

"Do not ask; you would not approve of my scheme, and there would only be
a fresh dispute."

"I think," said the poet, laying his hand on his friend's shoulder, "that
we have no reason to fear disputes.  So far they have been the cement,
the refreshing dew of our friendship."

"So long as they treated of ideas only, and not of deeds."

"You intend to get possession of a human heart!"  cried the poet.  "Think
of what you are doing!  The heart is the vessel of that effluence of the
universal soul, which lives in us."

"Are you so sure of that?"  cried the physician with some irritation,
"then give me the proof.  Have you ever examined a heart, has any one
member of my profession done so?  The hearts of criminals and prisoners
of war even are declared sacred from touch, and when we stand helpless by
a patient, and see our medicines work harm as often as good, why is it?
Only because we physicians are expected to work as blindly as an
astronomer, if he were required to look at the stars through a board.
At Heliopolis I entreated the great Urma Rahotep, the truly learned chief
of our craft, and who held me in esteem, to allow me to examine the heart
of a dead Amu; but he refused me, because the great Sechet leads virtuous
Semites also into the fields of the blessed.

[According to the inscription accompanying the famous
representations of the four nations (Egyptians, Semites, Libyans,
and Ethiopians) in the tomb of Seti I.]

And then followed all the old scruples: that to cut up the heart of a
beast even is sinful, because it also is the vehicle of a soul, perhaps a
condemned and miserable human soul, which before it can return to the
One, must undergo purification by passing through the bodies of animals.
I was not satisfied, and declared to him that my great-grandfather
Nebsecht, before he wrote his treatise on the heart, must certainly have
examined such an organ.  Then he answered me that the divinity had
revealed to him what he had written, and therefore his work had been
accepted amongst the sacred writings of Toth,

[Called by the Greeks "Hermetic Books."  The Papyrus Ebers is the
work called by Clemens of Alexandria "the Book of Remedies."]

which stood fast and unassailable as the laws of the world; he wished to
give me peace for quiet work, and I also, he said, might be a chosen
spirit, the divinity might perhaps vouchsafe revelations to me too.  I
was young at that time, and spent my nights in prayer, but I only wasted
away, and my spirit grew darker instead of clearer.  Then I killed in
secret--first a fowl, then rats, then a rabbit, and cut up their hearts,
and followed the vessels that lead out of them, and know little more now
than I did at first; but I must get to the bottom of the truth, and I
must have a human heart."

"What will that do for you?"  asked Pentaur; "you cannot hope to perceive
the invisible and the infinite with your human eyes?"

"Do you know my great-grandfather's treatise?"

"A little," answered the poet; "he said that wherever he laid his
finger, whether on the head, the hands, or the stomach, he everywhere met
with the heart, because its vessels go into all the members, and the
heart is the meeting point of all these vessels.  Then Nebsecht proceeds
to state how these are distributed in the different members, and shows--
is it not so?--that the various mental states, such as anger, grief,
aversion, and also the ordinary use of the word heart, declare entirely
for his view."

"That is it.  We have already discussed it, and I believe that he is
right, so far as the blood is concerned, and the animal sensations.  But
the pure and luminous intelligence in us--that has another seat," and the
physician struck his broad but low forehead with his hand.  "I have
observed heads by the hundred down at the place of execution, and I have
also removed the top of the skulls of living animals.  But now let me
write, before we are disturbed."

[Human brains are prescribed for a malady of the eyes in the Ebers
papyrus.  Herophilus, one of the first scholars of the Alexandrine
Museum, studied not only the bodies of executed criminals, but made
his experiments also on living malefactors.  He maintained that the
four cavities of the human brain are the seat of the soul.]

The physician took the reed, moistened it with black color prepared from
burnt papyrus, and in elegant hieratic characters

[At the time of our narrative the Egyptians had two kinds of
writing-the hieroglyphic, which was generally used for monumental
inscriptions, and in which the letters consisted of conventional
representations of various objects, mathematical and arbitrary
symbols, and the hieratic, used for writing on papyrus, and in
which, with the view of saving time, the written pictures underwent
so many alterations and abbreviations that the originals could
hardly be recognized.  In the 8th century there was a further
abridgment of the hieratic writing, which was called the demotic, or
people's writing, and was used in commerce.  Whilst the hieroglyphic
and hieratic writings laid the foundations of the old sacred
dialect, the demotic letters were only used to write the spoken
language of the people.  E. de Rouge's Chrestomathie Egyptienne.
H.  Brugsch's Hieroglyphische Grammatik.  Le Page Renouf's shorter
hieroglyphical grammar.  Ebers' Ueber das Hieroglyphische
Schriftsystem, 2nd edition, 1875, in the lectures of Virchow
Holtzendorff.]

wrote the paper for the paraschites, in which he confessed to having
impelled him to the theft of a heart, and in the most binding manner
declared himself willing to take the old man's guilt upon himself before
Osiris and the judges of the dead.

When he had finished, Pentaur held out his hand for the paper, but
Nebsecht folded it together, placed it in a little bag in which lay an
amulet that his dying mother had hung round his neck, and said, breathing
deeply:

"That is done.  Farewell, Pentaur."

But the poet held the physician back; he spoke to him with the warmest
words, and conjured him to abandon his enterprise.  His prayers, however,
had no power to touch Nebsecht, who only strove forcibly to disengage his
finger from Pentaur's strong hand, which held him as in a clasp of iron.
The excited poet did not remark that he was hurting his friend, until
after a new and vain attempt at freeing himself, Nebsecht cried out in
pain, "You are crushing my finger!"

A smile passed over the poet's face, he loosened his hold on the
physician, and stroked the reddened hand like a mother who strives to
divert her child from pain.

"Don't be angry with me, Nebsecht," he said, "you know my unlucky fists,
and to-day they really ought to hold you fast, for you have too mad a
purpose on hand."

"Mad?"  said the physician, whilst he smiled in his turn.  "It may be so;
but do you not know that we Egyptians all have a peculiar tenderness for
our follies, and are ready to sacrifice house and land to them?"

"Our own house and our own land," cried the poet: and then added
seriously, "but not the existence, not the happiness of another."

"Have I not told you that I do not look upon the heart as the seat of our
intelligence?  So far as I am concerned, I would as soon be buried with a
ram's heart as with my own."

"I do not speak of the plundered dead, but of the living," said the poet.
"If the deed of the paraschites is discovered, he is undone, and you
would only have saved that sweet child in the hut behind there, to fling
her into deeper misery."

Nebsecht looked at the other with as much astonishment and dismay, as if
he had been awakened from sleep by bad tidings.  Then he cried: "All that
I have, I would share with the old man and Uarda."

"And who would protect her?"

"Her father."

"That rough drunkard who to-morrow or the day after may be sent no one
knows where."

"He is a good fellow," said the physician interrupting his friend, and
stammering violently.  "But who 'would do anything to the child?  She is
so so ....  She is so charming, so perfectly--sweet and lovely."

With these last words he cast down his eyes and reddened like a girl.

"You understand that," he said, "better than I do; yes, and you also
think her beautiful!  Strange! you must not laugh if I confess--I am but
a man like every one else--when I confess, that I believe I have at
length discovered in myself the missing organ for beauty of form--not
believe merely, but truly have discovered it, for it has not only spoken,
but cried, raged, till I felt a rushing in my ears, and for the first
time was attracted more by the sufferer than by suffering.  I have sat in
the hut as though spell-bound, and gazed at her hair, at her eyes, at how
she breathed.  They must long since have missed me at the House of Seti,
perhaps discovered all my preparations, when seeking me in my room!  For
two days and nights I have allowed myself to be drawn away from my work,
for the sake of this child.  Were I one of the laity, whom you would
approach, I should say that demons had bewitched me.  But it is not
that,"--and with these words the physician's eyes flamed up--"it is not
that!  The animal in me, the low instincts of which the heart is the
organ, and which swelled my breast at her bedside, they have mastered the
pure and fine emotions here--here in this brain; and in the very moment
when I hoped to know as the God knows whom you call the Prince of
knowledge, in that moment I must learn that the animal in me is stronger
than that which I call my God."

The physician, agitated and excited, had fixed his eyes on the ground
during these last words, and hardly noticed the poet, who listened to him
wondering and full of sympathy.  For a time both were silent; then
Pentaur laid his hand on his friend's hand, and said cordially:

"My soul is no stranger to what you feel, and heart and head, if I may
use your own words, have known a like emotion.  But I know that what we
feel, although it may be foreign to our usual sensations, is loftier and
more precious than these, not lower.  Not the animal, Nebsecht, is it
that you feel in yourself, but God.  Goodness is the most beautiful
attribute of the divine, and you have always been well-disposed towards
great and small; but I ask you, have you ever before felt so irresistibly
impelled to pour out an ocean of goodness on another being, whether for
Uarda you would not more joyfully and more self-forgetfully sacrifice all
that you have, and all that you are, than to father and mother and your
oldest friend?"

Nebsecht nodded assentingly.

"Well then," cried Pentaur, "follow your new and godlike emotion, be good
to Uarda and do not sacrifice her to your vain wishes.  My poor friend!
With your--enquiries into the secrets of life, you have never looked
round upon itself, which spreads open and inviting before our eyes.  Do
you imagine that the maiden who can thus inflame the calmest thinker in
Thebes, will not be coveted by a hundred of the common herd when her
protector fails her?  Need I tell you that amongst the dancers in the
foreign quarter nine out of ten are the daughters of outlawed parents?
Can you endure the thought that by your hand innocence may be consigned
to vice, the rose trodden under foot in the mud?  Is the human heart that
you desire, worth an Uarda?  Now go, and to-morrow come again to me your
friend who understands how to sympathize with all you feel, and to whom
you have approached so much the nearer to-day that you have learned to
share his purest happiness."

Pentaur held out his hand to the physician, who held it some time, then
went thoughtfully and lingeringly, unmindful of the burning glow of the
mid-day sun, over the mountain into the valley of the king's graves
towards the hut of the paraschites.

Here he found the soldier with his daughter.  "Where is the old man?"
he asked anxiously.

"He has gone to his work in the house of the embalmer," was the answer.
"If anything should happen to him he bade me tell you not to forget the
writing and the book.  He was as though out of his mind when he left us,
and put the ram's heart in his bag and took it with him.  Do you remain
with the little one; my mother is at work, and I must go with the
prisoners of war to Harmontis."




CHAPTER XVIII.

While the two friends from the House of Seti were engaged in
conversation, Katuti restlessly paced the large open hall of her son-in-
law's house, in which we have already seen her.  A snow-white cat
followed her steps, now playing with the hem of her long plain dress, and
now turning to a large stand on which the dwarf Nemu sat in a heap; where
formerly a silver statue had stood, which a few months previously had
been sold.

He liked this place, for it put him in a position to look into the eyes
of his mistress and other frill-grown people.  "If you have betrayed me!
If you have deceived me!" said Katuti with a threatening gesture as she
passed his perch.

"Put me on a hook to angle for a crocodile if I have.  But I am curious
to know how he will offer you the money."

"You swore to me," interrupted his mistress with feverish agitation,
that you had not used my name in asking Paaker to save us?"

"A thousand times I swear it," said the little man.

"Shall I repeat all our conversation?  I tell thee he will sacrifice his
land, and his house-great gate and all, for one friendly glance from
Nefert's eyes."

"If only Mena loved her as he does!"  sighed the widow, and then again
she walked up and down the hall in silence, while the dwarf looked out at
the garden entrance.  Suddenly she paused in front of Nemu, and said so
hoarsely that Nemu shuddered:

"I wish she were a widow."  "The little man made a gesture as if to
protect himself from the evil eye, but at the same instant he slipped
down from his pedestal, and exclaimed:

"There is a chariot, and I hear his big dog barking.  It is he.  Shall I
call Nefert?"

"No!"  said Katuti in a low voice, and she clutched at the back of a
chair as if for support.

The dwarf shrugged his shoulders, and slunk behind a clump of ornamental
plants, and a few minutes later Paaker stood in the presence of Katuti,
who greeted him, with quiet dignity and self-possession.

Not a feature of her finely-cut face betrayed her inward agitation, and
after the Mohar had greeted her she said with rather patronizing
friendliness:

"I thought that you would come.  Take a seat.  Your heart is like your
father's; now that you are friends with us again it is not by halves."

Paaker had come to offer his aunt the sum which was necessary for the
redemption of her husband's mummy.  He had doubted for a long time
whether he should not leave this to his mother, but reserve partly and
partly vanity had kept him from doing so.  He liked to display his
wealth, and Katuti should learn what he could do, what a son-in-law she
had rejected.

He would have preferred to send the gold, which he had resolved to give
away, by the hand of one of his slaves, like a tributary prince.  But
that could not be done so he put on his finger a ring set with a valuable
stone, which king Seti I., had given to his father, and added various
clasps and bracelets to his dress.

When, before leaving the house, he looked at himself in a mirror, he said
to himself with some satisfaction, that he, as he stood, was worth as
much as the whole of Mena's estates.

Since his conversation with Nemu, and the dwarf's interpretation of his
dream, the path which he must tread to reach his aim had been plain
before him.  Nefert's mother must be won with the gold which would save
her from disgrace, and Mena must be sent to the other world.  He relied
chiefly on his own reckless obstinacy--which he liked to call firm
determination--Nemu's cunning, and the love-philter.

He now approached Katuti with the certainty of success, like a merchant
who means to acquire some costly object, and feels that he is rich enough
to pay for it.  But his aunt's proud and dignified manner confounded him.

He had pictured her quite otherwise, spirit-broken, and suppliant; and he
had expected, and hoped to earn, Nefert's thanks as well as her mother's
by his generosity.  Mena's pretty wife was however absent, and Katuti did
not send for her even after he had enquired after her health.

The widow made no advances, and some time passed in indifferent
conversation, till Paaker abruptly informed her that he had heard of her
son's reckless conduct, and had decided, as being his mother's nearest
relation, to preserve her from the degradation that threatened her.  For
the sake of his bluntness, which she took for honesty, Katuti forgave the
magnificence of his dress, which under the circumstances certainly seemed
ill-chosen; she thanked him with dignity, but warmly, more for the sake
of her children than for her own; for life she said was opening before
them, while for her it was drawing to its close.

"You are still at a good time of life," said Paaker.

"Perhaps at the best," replied the widow, "at any rate from my point of
view; regarding life as I do as a charge, a heavy responsibility."

"The administration of this involved estate must give you many, anxious
hours--that I understand."  Katuti nodded, and then said sadly:

"I could bear it all, if I were not condemned to see my poor child being
brought to misery without being able to help her or advise her.  You once
would willingly have married her, and I ask you, was there a maiden in
Thebes--nay in all Egypt--to compare with her for beauty?  Was she not
worthy to be loved,  and is she not so still?  Does she deserve that her
husband should leave her to starve, neglect her, and take a strange woman
into his tent as if he had repudiated her?  I see what you feel about it!
You throw all the blame on me.  Your heart says: 'Why did she break off
our betrothal,' and your right feeling tells you that you would have
given her a happier lot."

With these words Katuti took her nephew's hand, and went on with
increasing warmth.

"We know you to-day for the most magnanimous man in Thebes, for you have
requited injustice with an immense benefaction; but even as a boy you
were kind and noble.  Your father's wish has always been dear and sacred
to me, for during his lifetime he always behaved to us as an affectionate
brother, and I would sooner have sown the seeds of sorrow for myself than
for your mother, my beloved sister.  I brought up my child--I guarded her
jealously--for the young hero who was absent, proving his valor in Syria
--for you and for you only.  Then your father died, my sole stay and
protector."

"I know it all!"  interrupted Paaker looking gloomily at the floor.

"Who should have told you?"  said the widow.  "For your mother, when that
had happened which seemed incredible, forbid us her house, and shut her
ears.  The king himself urged Mena's suit, for he loves him as his own
son, and when I represented your prior claim he commanded;--and who may
resist the commands of the sovereign of two worlds, the Son of Ra?  Kings
have short memories; how often did your father hazard his life for him,
how many wounds had he received in his service.  For your father's sake
he might have spared you such an affront, and such pain."

"And have I myself served him, or not?"  asked the pioneer flushing
darkly.

"He knows you less," returned Katuti apologetically.  Then she changed
her tone to one of sympathy, and went on:

"How was it that you, young as you were, aroused his dissatisfaction, his
dislike, nay his--"

"His what?"  asked the pioneer, trembling with excitement.

"Let that pass!"  said the widow soothingly.  "The favor and disfavor of
kings are as those of the Gods.  Men rejoice in the one or bow to the
other."

"What feeling have I aroused in Rameses besides dissatisfaction, and
dislike?  I insist on knowing!"  said Paaker with increasing vehemence.

"You alarm me," the widow declared.  "And in speaking ill of you, his
only motive was to raise his favorite in Nefert's estimation."

"Tell me what he said!"  cried the pioneer; cold drops stood on his brown
forehead, and his glaring eyes showed the white eye-balls.

Katuti quailed before him, and drew back, but he followed her, seized her
arm, and said huskily:

"What did he say?"

"Paaker!"  cried the widow in pain and indignation.  "Let me go.  It is
better for you that I should not repeat the words with which Rameses
sought to turn Nefert's heart from you.  Let me go, and remember to whom
you are speaking."

But Paaker gripped her elbow the tighter, and urgently repeated his
question.

"Shame upon you!"  cried Katuti, "you are hurting me; let me go!  You
will not till you have heard what he said?  Have your own way then, but
the words are forced from me!  He said that if he did not know your
mother Setchem for an honest woman, he never would have believed you were
your father's son--for you were no more like him than an owl to an
eagle."

Paaker took his hand from Katuti's arm.  "And so--and so--" he muttered
with pale lips.

"Nefert took your part, and I too, but in vain.  Do not take the words
too hardly.  Your father was a man without an equal, and Rameses cannot
forget that we are related to the old royal house.  His grandfather, his
father, and himself are usurpers, and there is one now living who has a
better right to the throne than he has."

"The Regent Ani!"  exclaimed Paaker decisively.  Katuti nodded, she went
up to the pioneer and said in a whisper:

"I put myself in your hands, though I know they may be raised against me.
But you are my natural ally, for that same act of Rameses that disgraced
and injured you, made me a partner in the designs of Ani.  The king
robbed you of your bride, me of my daughter.  He filled your soul with
hatred for your arrogant rival, and mine with passionate regret for the
lost happiness of my child.  I feel the blood of Hatasu in my veins, and
my spirit is high enough to govern men.  It was I who roused the sleeping
ambition of the Regent--I who directed his gaze to the throne to which he
was destined by the Gods.  The ministers of the Gods, the priests, are
favorably disposed to us; we have--"

At this moment there was a commotion in the garden, and a breathless
slave rushed in exclaiming "The Regent is at the gate!"

Paaker stood in stupid perplexity, but he collected himself with an
effort and would have gone, but Katuti detained him.

"I will go forward to meet Ani," she said.  "He will be rejoiced to see
you, for he esteems you highly and was a friend of your father's."

As soon as Katuti had left the hall, the dwarf Nemu crept out of his
hiding-place, placed himself in front of Paaker, and asked boldly:

"Well?  Did I give thee good advice yesterday, or no?"

Put Paaker did not answer him, he pushed him aside with his foot, and
walked up and down in deep thought.

Katuti met the Regent half way down the garden.  He held a manuscript
roll in his hand, and greeted her from afar with a friendly wave of his
hand.

The widow looked at him with astonishment.

It seemed to her that he had grown taller and younger since the last time
she had seen him.

"Hail to your highness!"  she cried, half in joke half reverently, and
she raised her hands in supplication, as if he already wore the double
crown of Upper and Lower Egypt.  "Have the nine Gods met you?  have the
Hathors kissed you in your slumbers?  This is a white day--a lucky day--
I read it in your face!"  "That is reading a cipher!"  said Ani gaily,
but with dignity.  "Read this despatch."

Katuti took the roll from his hand, read it through, and then returned
it.

"The troops you equipped have conquered the allied armies of the
Ethiopians," she said gravely, "and are bringing their prince in fetters
to Thebes, with endless treasure, and ten thousand prisoners!  The Gods
be praised!"

"And above all things I thank the Gods that my general Scheschenk--my
foster-brother and friend--is returning well and unwounded from the war.
I think, Katuti, that the figures in our dreams are this day taking forms
of flesh and blood!"

"They are growing to the stature of heroes!"  cried the widow.  "And you
yourself, my lord, have been stirred by the breath of the Divinity.  You
walk like the worthy son of Ra, the Courage of Menth beams in your eyes,
and you smile like the victorious Horus."

"Patience, patience my friend," said Ani, moderating the eagerness of the
widow; "now, more than ever, we must cling to my principle of over-
estimating the strength of our opponents, and underrating our own.
Nothing has succeeded on which I had counted, and on the contrary many
things have justified my fears that they would fail.  The beginning of
the end is hardly dawning on us."

"But successes, like misfortunes, never come singly," replied Katuti.

"I agree with you," said Ani.  "The events of life seem to me to fall in
groups.  Every misfortune brings its fellow with it--like every piece of
luck.  Can you tell me of a second success?"

"Women win no battles," said the widow smiling. "But they win allies, and