"That brood of Rameses!"  he muttered.  "I will sweep them all away
together--the king, and Mena, and those haughty princes, and many more--
I know how.  Only wait, only wait!"  and he flung up his right fist with
a threatening gesture.

The door opened at this instant, and his mother entered the room; the
raging of the storm had drowned the sound of her steps, and as she
approached her revengeful son, she called his name in horror at the mad
wrath which was depicted in his countenance.  Paaker started, and then
said with apparent composure:

"Is it you, mother?  It is near morning, and it is better to be asleep
than awake in such an hour."

"I could not rest in my rooms," answered Setchem.  "The storm howled so
wildly, and I am so anxious, so frightfully unhappy--as I was before your
father died."

Then stay with me," said Paaker affectionately, and lie down on my
couch."

"I did not come here to sleep," replied Setchem.  "I am too unhappy at
all that happened to you on the larding-steps, it is frightful!  No, no,
my son, it is not about your smashed hand, though it grieves me to see
you in pain; it is about the king, and his anger when he hears of the
quarrel.  He favors you less than he did your lost father, I know it
well.  But how wildly you smile, how wild you looked when I carne in!
It went through my bones and marrow."

Both were silent for a time, and listened to the furious raging of the
storm.  At last Setchem spoke.  "There is something else," she said,
"which disturbs my mind.  I cannot forget the poet who spoke at the
festival to-day, young Pentaur.  His figure, his face, his movements, nay
his very voice, are exactly like those of your father at the time when he
was young, and courted me.  It is as if the Gods were fain to see the
best man that they ever took to themselves, walk before them a second
time upon earth."

"Yes, my lady," said the black slave; "no mortal eye ever saw such a
likeness.  I saw him fighting in front of the paraschites' cottage, and
he was more like my dead master than ever.  He swung the tent-post over
his head, as my lord used to swing his battle-axe."

"Be silent,"  cried  Paaker, "and  get out-idiot!  The priest is like my
father; I grant it, mother; but he is an insolent fellow, who offended me
grossly, and with whom I have to reckon--as with many others."

"How violent you are!"  interrupted his mother, "and how full of
bitterness and hatred.  Your father was so sweet-tempered, and kind to
everybody."

"Perhaps they are kind to me?"  retorted Paaker with a short laugh.
"Even the Immortals spite me, and throw thorns in my path.  But I will
push them aside with my own hand, and will attain what I desire without
the help of the Gods and overthrow all that oppose me."

"We cannot blow away a feather without the help of the Immortals,"
answered Setchem.  "So your father used to say, who was a very different
man both in body and mind from you!  I tremble before you this evening,
and at the curses you have uttered against the children of your lord and
sovereign, your father's best friend."

"But my enemy," shouted Paaker.  "You will get nothing from me but
curses.  And the brood of Rameses shall learn whether your husband's
son will let himself be ill-used and scorned without revenging him self.
I will fling them into an abyss, and I will laugh when I see them
writhing in the sand at my feet!"

"Fool!"  cried Setchem, beside herself.  "I am but a woman, and have
often blamed myself for being soft and weak; but as sure as I am faithful
to your dead father--who you are no more like than a bramble is like a
palm-tree--so surely will I tear my love for you out of my heart if you
--if you--Now I see! now I know!  Answer me-murderer!  Where are the
seven arrows with the wicked words which used to hang here?  Where are
the arrows  on which you had scrawled 'Death to Mena?'"

With these words Setchem breathlessly started forward, but the pioneer
drew back as she confronted him, as in his youthful days when she
threatened to punish him for some misdemeanor.  She followed him up,
caught him by the girdle, and in a hoarse voice repeated her question.
He stood still, snatched her hand angrily from his belt, and said
defiantly:

"I have put them in my quiver--and not for mere play.  Now you know."

Incapable of words, the maddened woman once more raised her hand against
her degenerate son, but he put back her arm.

"I am no longer a child," he said, "and I am master of this house.  I
will do what I will, if a hundred women hindered me!"  and with these
words he pointed to the door.  Setchem broke into loud sobs, and turned
her back upon him; but at the door once more she turned to look at him.
He had seated himself, and was resting his forehead on the table on which
the bowl of cold water stood.

Setchem fought a hard battle.  At last once more through her choking
tears she called his name, opened her arms wide and exclaimed:

"Here I am--here I am!  Come to my heart, only give up these hideous
thoughts of revenge."

But Paaker did not move, he did not look up at her, he did not speak,
he only shook his head in negation.  Setchem's hands fell, and she said
softly:

"What did your father teach you out of the scriptures?  'Your highest
praise consists in this, to reward your mother for what she has done for
you, in bringing you up, so that she may not raise her hands to God, nor
He hear her lamentation.'"

At these words, Paaker sobbed aloud, but he did not look at his mother.
She called him tenderly by his name; then her eyes fell on his quiver,
which lay on a bench with other arms.  Her heart shrunk within her, and
with a trembling voice she exclaimed:

"I forbid this mad vengeance--do you hear?  Will you give it up?  You do
not move?  No!  you will not!  Ye Gods, what can I do?"

She wrung her hands in despair; then she hastily crossed the room,
snatched out one of the arrows, and strove to break it.  Paaker sprang
from his seat, and wrenched the weapon from her hand; the sharp point
slightly scratched the skin, and dark drops of blood flowed from it, and
dropped upon the floor.

The Mohar would have taken the wounded hand, for Setchem, who had the
weakness of never being able to see blood flow--neither her own nor
anybody's else--had turned as pale as death; but she pushed him from her,
and as she spoke her gentle voice had a dull estranged tone.

"This hand," she said--"a mother's hand wounded by her son--shall never
again grasp yours till you have sworn a solemn oath to put away from you
all thoughts of revenge and murder, and not to disgrace your father's
name.  I have said it, and may his glorified spirit be my witness, and
give me strength to keep my word!"

Paaker had fallen on his knees, and was engaged in a terrible mental
struggle, while his mother slowly went towards the door.  There again she
stood still for a moment; she did not speak, but her eyes appealed to him
once more.

In vain.  At last she left the room, and the wind slammed the door
violently behind her.  Paaker groaned, and pressed his hand over his
eyes.

"Mother, mother!"  he cried.  "I cannot go back--I cannot."

A fearful gust of wind howled round the house, and drowned his voice,
and then he heard two tremendous claps, as if rocks had been hurled from
heaven.  He started up and went to the window, where the melancholy grey
dawn was showing, in order to call the slaves.  Soon they came trooping
out, and the steward called out as soon as he saw him:

"The storm has blown down the masts at the great gate!"

"Impossible!"  cried Paaker.

"Yes, indeed!"  answered the servant.  "They have been sawn through close
to the ground.  The matmaker no doubt did it, whose collar-bone was
broken.  He has escaped in this fearful night."

"Let out the dogs," cried the Mohar.  "All who have legs run after the
blackguard!  Freedom, and five handfuls of gold for the man who brings
him back."

The guests at the House of Seti had already gone to rest, when Ameni was
informed of the arrival of the sorceress, and he at once went into the
hall, where Ani was waiting to see her; the Regent roused himself from a
deep reverie when he heard the high-priest's steps.

"Is she come?"  he asked hastily; when Ameni answered in the affirmative
Ani went on meanwhile carefully disentangling the disordered curls of his
wig, and arranging his broad, collar-shaped necklace:

"The witch may exercise some influence over me; will you not give me your
blessing to preserve me from her spells?  It is true, I have on me this
Houss'-eye, and this Isis-charm, but one never knows."

"My presence will be your safe-guard," said Ameni.  "But-no, of course
you wish to speak with her alone.  You shall be conducted to a room,
which is protected against all witchcraft by sacred texts.  My brother,"
he continued to one of the serving-priests, "let the witch be taken into
one of the consecrated rooms, and then, when you have sprinkled the
threshold, lead my lord Ani thither."

The high-priest went away, and into a small room which adjoined the hall
where the interview between the Regent and the old woman was about to
take place, and where the softest whisper spoken in the larger room could
be heard by means of an ingeniously contrived and invisible tube.

When Ani saw the old woman, he started back is horror; her appearance at
this moment was, in fact, frightful.  The storm had tossed and torn her
garment and tumbled all her thick, white hair, so that locks of it fell
over her face.  She leaned on a staff, and bending far forward looked
steadily at the Regent; and her eyes, red and smarting from the sand
which the wind had flung in her face, seemed to glow as she fixed them
on his.  She looked as a hyaena might when creeping to seize its prey,
and Ani felt a cold shiver and he heard her hoarse voice addressing him
to greet him and to represent that he had chosen a strange hour for
requiring her to speak with him.

When she had thanked him for his promise of renewing her letter of
freedom, and had confirmed the statement that Paaker had had a love-
philter from her, she parted her hair from off her face--it occurred to
her that she was a woman.

The Regent sat in an arm-chair, she stood before him; but the struggle
with the storm had tired her old limbs, and she begged Ani to permit her
to be seated, as she had a long story to tell, which would put Paaker
into his power, so that he would find him as yielding as wax.  The Regent
signed her to a corner of the room, and she squatted down on the
pavement.

When he desired her to proceed with her story, she looked at the floor
for some time in silence, and then began, as if half to herself:

"I will tell thee, that I may find peace--I do not want, when I die, to
be buried unembalmed.  Who knows but perhaps strange things may happen in
the other world, and I would not wish to miss them.  I want to see him
again down there, even if it were in the seventh limbo of the damned.
Listen to me!  But, before I speak, promise me that whatever I tell thee,
thou wilt leave me in peace, and will see that I am embalmed when I am
dead.  Else I will not speak."

Ani bowed consent.

"No-no," she said.  "I will tell thee what to swear 'If I do not keep my
word to Hekt--who gives the Mohar into my power--may the Spirits whom she
rules, annihilate me before I mount the throne.'  Do not be vexed, my
lord--and say only 'Yes.'  What I can tell, is worth more than a mere
word."

"Well then--yes!"  cried the Regent, eager for the mighty revelation.

The old woman muttered a few unintelligible words; then she collected
herself, stretched out her lean neck, and asked, as she fixed her
sparkling eyes on the man before her:

"Did'st thou ever, when thou wert young, hear of the singer Beki?  Well,
look at me, I am she."

She laughed loud and hoarsely, and drew her tattered robe across her
bosom, as if half ashamed of her unpleasing person.

"Ay!"  she continued.  "Men find pleasure in grapes by treading them
down, and when the must is drunk the skins are thrown on the dung-hill.
Grape-skins, that is what I am--but you need not look at me so pitifully;
I was grapes once, and poor and despised as I am now, no one can take
from me what I have had and have been.  Mine has been a life out of a
thousand, a complete life, full to overflowing of joy and suffering, of
love and hate, of delight, despair, and revenge.  Only to talk of it
raises me to a seat by thy throne there.  No, let me be, I am used now to
squatting on the ground; but I knew thou wouldst hear me to the end, for
once I too was one of you.  Extremes meet in all things--I know it by
experience.  The greatest men will hold out a hand to a beautiful woman,
and time was when I could lead you all as with a rope.  Shall I begin at
the beginning?  Well--I seldom am in the mood for it now-a-days.  Fifty
years ago I sang a song with this voice of mine; an old crow like me?
sing!  But so it was.  My father was a man of rank, the governor of
Abydos; when the first Rameses took possession of the throne my father
was faithful to the house of thy fathers, so the new king sent us all to
the gold mines, and there they all died--my parents, brothers, and
sisters.  I only survived by some miracle.  As I was handsome and sang
well, a music master took me into his band, brought me to Thebes, and
wherever there was a feast given in any great house, Beki was in request.
Of flowers and money and tender looks I had a plentiful harvest; but I
was proud and cold, and the misery of my people had made me bitter at an
age when usually even bad liquor tastes of honey.  Not one of all the gay
young fellows, princes' sons, and nobles, dared to touch my hand.  But my
hour was to come; the handsomest and noblest man of them all, and grave
and dignified too--was Assa, the old Mohar's father, and grandfather of
Pentaur--no, I should say of Paaker, the pioneer; thou hast known him.
Well, wherever I sang, he sat opposite me, and gazed at me, and I could
not take my eyes off him, and--thou canst tell the rest! no!  Well, no
woman before or after me can ever love a man as I loved Assa.  Why dost
thou not laugh?  It must seem odd, too, to hear such a thing from the
toothless mouth of an old witch.  He is dead, long since dead.  I hate
him!  and yet--wild as it sounds--I believe I love him yet.  And he loved
me--for two years; then he went to the war with Seti, and remained a long
time away, and when I saw him again he had courted the daughter of some
rich and noble house.  I was handsome enough still, but he never looked
at me at the banquets.  I came across him at least twenty times, but he
avoided me as if I were tainted with leprosy, and I began to fret, and
fell ill of a fever.  The doctors said it was all over with me, so I sent
him a letter in which there was nothing but these words: 'Beki is dying,
and would like to see Assa once more,' and in the papyrus I put his first
present--a plain ring.  And what was the answer?  a handful of gold!
Gold--gold!  Thou may'st believe me, when I say that the sight of it was
more torturing to my eyes than the iron with which they put out the eyes
of criminals.  Even now, when I think of it--But what do you men, you
lords of rank and wealth, know of a breaking heart?  When two or three of
you happen to meet, and if thou should'st tell the story, the most
respectable will say in a pompous voice: 'The man acted nobly indeed; he
was married, and his wife would have complained with justice if he had
gone to see the singer.'  Am I right or wrong?  I know; not one will
remember that the other was a woman, a feeling human being; it will occur
to no one that his deed on the one hand saved an hour of discomfort, and
on the other wrought half a century of despair.  Assa escaped his wife's
scolding, but a thousand curses have fallen on him and on his house.  How
virtuous he felt himself when he had crushed and poisoned a passionate
heart that had never ceased to love him!  Ay, and he would have come if
he had not still felt some love for me, if he had not misdoubted himself,
and feared that the dying woman might once more light up the fire he had
so carefully smothered and crushed out.  I would have grieved for him--
but that he should send me money, money!--that I have never forgiven;
that he shall atone for in his grandchild."  The old woman spoke the last
words as if in a dream, and without seeming to remember her hearer.  Ani
shuddered, as if he were in the presence of a mad woman, and he
involuntarily drew his chair back a little way.

The witch observed this; she took breath and went on: "You lords, who
walk in high places, do not know how things go on in the depths beneath
you; you do not choose to know.

"But I will shorten my story.  I got well, but I got out of my bed thin
and voiceless.  I had plenty of money, and I spent it in buying of
everyone who professed magic in Thebes, potions to recover Assa's love
for me, or in paying for spells to be cast on him, or for magic drinks to
destroy him.  I tried too to recover my voice, but the medicines I took
for it made it rougher not sweeter.  Then an excommunicated priest, who
was famous among the magicians, took me into his house, and there I
learned many things; his old companions afterwards turned upon him, he
came over here into the Necropolis, and I came with him.  When at last he
was taken and hanged, I remained in his cave, and myself took to
witchcraft.  Children point their fingers at me, honest men and women
avoid me, I am an abomination to all men, nay to myself.  And one only is
guilty of all this ruin--the noblest gentleman in Thebes--the pious Assa.

"I had practised magic for several years, and had become learned in many
arts, when one day the gardener Sent, from whom I was accustomed to buy
plants for my mixtures--he rents a plot of ground from the temple of
Seti--Sent brought me a new-born child that had been born with six toes;
I was to remove the supernumerary toe by my art.  The pious mother of the
child was lying ill of fever, or she never would have allowed it; I took
the screaming little wretch--for such things are sometimes curable.  The
next morning, a few hours after sunrise, there was a bustle in front of
my cave; a maid, evidently belonging to a noble house, was calling me.
Her mistress, she said, had come with her to visit the tomb of her
fathers, and there had been taken ill, and had given birth to a child.
Her mistress was lying senseless--I must go at once, and help her.  I
took the little six-toed brat in my cloak, told my slavegirl to follow me
with water, and soon found myself--as thou canst guess--at the tomb of
Assa's ancestors.  The poor woman, who lay there in convulsions, was his
daughter-in-law Setchem.  The baby, a boy, was as sound as a nut, but she
was evidently in great danger.  I sent the maid with the litter, which
was waiting outside, to the temple here for help; the girl said that her
master, the father of the child, was at the war, but that the
grandfather, the noble Assa, had promised to meet the lady Setchem at the
tomb, and would shortly be coming; then she disappeared with the litter.
I washed the child, and kissed it as if it were my own.  Then I heard
distant steps in the valley, and the recollection of the moment when I,
lying at the point of death, had received that gift of money from Assa
came over me, and then I do not know myself how it happened--I gave the
new-born grandchild of Assa to my slave-girl, and told her to carry it
quickly to the cave, and I wrapped the little six-toed baby in my rags
and held it in my lap.  There I sat--and the minutes seemed hours, till
Assa came up; and when he stood before me, grown grey, it is true, but
still handsome and upright--I put the gardener's boy, the six-toed brat,
into his very arms, and a thousand demons seemed to laugh hoarsely within
me.  He thanked me, he did not know me, and once more he offered me a
handful of gold.  I took it, and I listened as the priest, who had come
from the temple, prophesied all sorts of fine things for the little one,
who was born in so fortunate an hour; and then I went back into my cave,
and there I laughed till I cried, though I do not know that the tears
sprang from the laughter.

"A few days after I gave Assa's grandchild to the gardener, and told him
the sixth toe had come off; I had made a little wound on his foot to take
in the bumpkin.  So Assa's grandchild, the son of the Mohar, grew up as
the gardener's child, and received the name of Pentaur, and he was
brought up in the temple here, and is wonderfully like Assa; but the
gardener's monstrous brat is the pioneer Paaker.  That is the whole
secret."

Ani had listened in silence to the terrible old woman.

We are involuntarily committed to any one who can inform us of some
absorbing fact, and who knows how to make the information valuable.
It did not occur to the Regent to punish the witch for her crimes; he
thought rather of his older friends' rapture when they talked of the
singer Beki's songs and beauty.  He looked at the woman, and a cold
shiver ran through all his limbs.

"You may live in peace," he said at last; "and when you die I will see to
your being embalmed; but give up your black arts.  You must be rich, and,
if you are not, say what you need.  Indeed, I scarcely dare offer you
gold--it excites your hatred, as I understand."

"I could take thine--but now let me go!"

She got up, and went towards the door, but the Regent called to her to
stop, and asked:

"Is Assa the father of your son, the little Nemu, the dwarf of the lady
Katuti?"

The witch laughed loudly.  "Is the little wretch like Assa or like Beki?
I picked him up like many other children."

"But he is clever!"  said Ani.

"Ay-that he is.  He has planned many a shrewd stroke, and is devoted to
his mistress.  He will help thee to thy purpose, for he himself has one
too."

"And that is--?"

"Katuti will rise to greatness with thee, and to riches through Paaker,
who sets out to-morrow to make the woman he loves a widow."

"You know a great deal," said Ani meditatively, "and I would ask you one
thing more; though indeed your story has supplied the answer--but perhaps
you know more now than you did in your youth.  Is there in truth any
effectual love-philter?"

"I  will not deceive thee, for I desire that thou should'st keep thy word
to me," replied Hekt.  "A love potion rarely has any effect, and never
but on women who have never before loved.  If it is given to a woman
whose heart is filled with the image of another man her passion for him
only will grow the stronger."

"Yet another," said Ani.  "Is there any way of destroying an enemy at a
distance?"

"Certainly," said the witch.  "Little people may do mean things, and
great people can let others do things that they cannot do themselves.
My story has stirred thy gall, and it seems to me that thou dost not love
the poet Pentaur.  A smile!  Well then--I have not lost sight of him, and
I know he is grown up as proud and as handsome as Assa.  He is
wonderfully like him, and I could have loved him--have loved as this
foolish heart had better never have loved.  It is strange!  In many
women, who come to me, I see how their hearts cling to the children of
men who have abandoned them, and we women are all alike, in most things.
But I will not let myself love Assa's grandchild--I must not.  I will
injure him, and help everyone that persecutes him; for though Assa is
dead, the wrongs he did me live in me so long as I live myself.
Pentaur's destiny must go on its course.  If thou wilt have his life,
consult with Nemu, for he hates him too, and he will serve thee more
effectually than I can with my vain spells and silly harmless brews.  Now
let me go home!"

A few hours later Ameni sent to invite the Regent to breakfast.

"Do you know who the witch Hekt is?"  asked Ani.

"Certainly--how should I notknow?  She is the singer Beki--the former
enchantress of Thebes.  May I ask what her communications were?"

Ani thought it best not to confide the secret of Pentaur's birth to the
high-priest, and answered evasively.  Then Ameni begged to be allowed to
give him some information about the old woman, and how she had had a hand
in the game; and he related to his hearer, with some omissions and
variations--as if it were a fact he had long known--the very story which
a few hours since he had overheard, and learned for the first time.  Ani
feigned great astonishment, and agreed with the high-priest that Paaker
should not for the present be informed of his true origin.

"He is a strangely constituted man," said Ameni, "and he is not incapable
of playing us some unforeseen trick before he has done his part, if he is
told who he is."


The storm had exhausted itself, and the sky, though covered still with
torn and flying clouds, cleared by degrees, as the morning went on; a
sharp coolness succeeded the hot blast, but the sun as it mounted higher
and higher soon heated the air.  On the roads and in the gardens lay
uprooted trees and many slightly-built houses which had been blown down,
while the tents in the strangers' quarter, and hundreds of light palm-
thatched roofs, had been swept away.

The Regent was returning to Thebes, and with him went Ameni, who desired
to ascertain by his own eyes what mischief the whirlwind had done to his
garden in the city.  On the Nile they met Paaker's boat, and Ani caused
it and his own to be stopped, while he requested Paaker to visit him
shortly at the palace.

The high-priest's garden was in no respect inferior in beauty and extent
to that of the Mohar.  The ground had belonged to his family from the
remotest generations, and his house was large and magnificent.  He seated
himself in a shady arbor, to take a repast with his still handsome wife
and his young and pretty daughters.

He consoled his wife for the various damage done by the hurricane,
promised the girls to build a new and handsomer clove-cot in the place of
the one which had been blown down, and laughed and joked with them all;
for here the severe head of the House of Seti, the grave Superior of the
Necropolis, became a simple man, an affectionate husband, a tender
father, a judicious friend, among his children, his flowers, and his
birds.  His youngest daughter clung to his right arm, and an older one to
his left, when he rose from table to go with them to the poultry-yard.

On the way thither a servant announced to him that the Lady Setchem
wished to see him.

"Take her to your mistress," he said.

But the slave--who held in his hand a handsome gift in money--explained
that the widow wished to speak with him alone.

"Can I never enjoy an hour's peace like other men?"  exclaimed Ameni
annoyed.  "Your mistress can receive her, and she can wait with her till
I come.  It is true, girls--is it not?--that I belong to you just now,
and to the fowls, and ducks, and pigeons?"

His youngest daughter kissed him, the second patted him affectionately,
and they all three went gaily forward.  An hour later he requested the
Lady Setchem to accompany him into the garden.

The poor, anxious, and frightened woman had resolved on this step with
much difficulty; tears filled her kind eyes, as she communicated her
troubles to the high-priest.

"Thou art a wise counsellor," she said, "and thou knowest well how my
son honors the Gods of the temple of Seti with gifts and offerings.  He
will not listen to his mother, but thou hast influence with him.  He
meditates frightful things, and if he cannot be terrified by threats of
punishment from the Immortals, he will raise his hand against Mena, and
perhaps--"

"Against the king," interrupted Ameni gravely.  "I know it, and I will
speak to him."

"Thanks, oh a thousand thanks!"  cried the widow, and she seized the
high-priests robe to kiss it.  "It was thou who soon after his birth
didst tell my husband that he was born under a lucky star, and would grow
to be an honor and an ornament to his house and to his country.  And now
--now he will ruin himself in this world, and the next."

"What I foretold of your son," said Ameni, "shall assuredly be fulfilled,
for the ways of the Gods are not as the ways of men."

"Thy words do me good!"  cried Setchem.  "None can tell what fearful
terror weighed upon my heart, when I made up my mind to come here.  But
thou dost not yet know all.  The great masts of cedar, which Paaker sent
from Lebanon to Thebes to bear our banners, and ornament our gateway,
were thrown to the ground at sunrise by the frightful wind."

"Thus shall your son's defiant spirit be broken," said Ameni; "But for
you, if you have patience, new joys shall arise."

"I thank thee again," said Setchem.  But something yet remains to be
said.  I know that I am wasting the time that thou dost devote to thy
family, and I remember thy saying once that here in Thebes thou wert like
a pack-Horse with his load taken off, and free to wander over a green
meadow.  I will not disturb thee much longer--but the Gods sent me such a
wonderful vision.  Paaker would not listen to me, and I went back into my
room full of sorrow; and when at last, after the sun had risen, I fell
asleep for a few minutes, I dreamed I saw before me the poet Pentaur, who
is wonderfully like my dead husband in appearance and in voice.  Paaker
went up to him, and abused him violently, and threatened him with his
fist; the priest raised his arms in prayer, just as I saw him yesterday
at the festival--but not in devotion, but to seize Paaker, and wrestle
with him.  The struggle did not last long, for Paaker seemed to shrink
up, and lost his human form, and fell at the poet's feet--not my son, but
a shapeless lump of clay such as the potter uses to make jars of."

"A strange dream!"  exclaimed Ameni, not without agitation.  "A very
strange dream, but it bodes you good.  Clay, Setchem, is yielding, and
clearly indicates that which the Gods prepare for you.  The Immortals
will give you a new and a better son instead of the old one, but it is
not revealed to me by what means.  Go now, and sacrifice to the Gods, and
trust to the wisdom of those who guide the life of the universe, and of
all mortal creatures.  Yet--I would give you one more word of advice.
If Paaker comes to you repentant, receive him kindly, and let me know;
but if he will not yield, close your rooms against him, and let him
depart without taking leave of you."

When Setchem, much encouraged, was gone away, Ameni said to himself:

"She will find splendid compensation for this coarse scoundrel, and she
shall not spoil the tool we need to strike our blow.  I have often
doubted how far dreams do, indeed, foretell the future, but to-day my
faith in them is increased.  Certainly a mother's heart sees farther than
that of any other human being."

At the door of her house Setchem came up with her son's chariot.
They saw each other, but both looked away, for they could not meet
affectionately, and would not meet coldly.  As the horses outran the
litter-bearers, the mother and son looked round at each other, their eyes
met, and each felt a stab in the heart.

In the evening the pioneer, after he had had an interview with the
Regent, went to the temple of Seti to receive Ameni's blessing on all his
undertakings.  Then, after sacrificing in the tomb of his ancestors, he
set out for Syria.

Just as he was getting into his chariot, news was brought him that the
mat-maker, who had sawn through the masts at the gate, had been caught.

"Put out his eyes!"  he cried; and these were the last words he spoke as
he quitted his home.

Setchem looked after him for a long time; she had refused to bid him
farewell, and now she implored the Gods to turn his heart, and to
preserve him from malice and crime.




CHAPTER XXXI.

Three days had passed since the pioneer's departure, and although it was
still early, busy occupation was astir in Bent-Anat's work-rooms.

The ladies had passed the stormy night, which had succeeded the exciting
evening of the festival, without sleep.

Nefert felt tired and sleepy the next morning, and begged the princess
to introduce her to her new duties for the first time next day; but the
princess spoke to her encouragingly, told her that no man should put off
doing right till the morrow, and urged her to follow her into her
workshop.

"We must both come to different minds," said she.  "I often shudder
involuntarily, and feel as if I bore a brand--as if I had a stain here on
my shoulder where it was touched by Paaker's rough hand."

The first day of labor gave Nefert a good many difficulties to overcome;
on the second day the work she had begun already had a charm for her, and
by the third she rejoiced in the little results of her care.

Bent-Anat had put her in the right place, for she had the direction of a
large number of young girls and women, the daughters, wives, and widows
of those Thebans who were at the war, or who had fallen in the field, who
sorted and arranged the healing herbs.  Her helpers sat in little circles
on the ground; in the midst of each lay a great heap of fresh and dry
plants, and in front of each work-woman a number of parcels of the
selected roots, leaves, and flowers.

An old physician presided over the whole, and had shown Nefert the first
day the particular plants which he needed.

The wife of Mena, who was fond of flowers, had soon learnt them all, and
she taught willingly, for she loved children.

She soon had favorites among the children, and knew some as being
industrious and careful, others as idle and heedless:

"Ay! ay!"  she exclaimed, bending over a little half-naked maiden with
great almond-shaped eyes.  "You are mixing them all together.  Your
father, as you tell me, is at the war.  Suppose, now, an arrow were to
strike him, and this plant, which would hurt him, were laid on the
burning wound instead of this other, which would do him good--that would
be very sad."

The child nodded her head, and looked her work through again.  Nefert
turned to a little idler, and said: "You are chattering again, and doing
nothing, and yet your father is in the field.  If he were ill now, and
has no medicine, and if at night when he is asleep he dreams of you, and
sees you sitting idle, he may say to himself: 'Now I might get well, but
my little girl at home does not love me, for she would rather sit with
her hands in her lap than sort herbs for her sick father.'"

Then Nefert turned to a large group of the girls, who were sorting
plants, and said: "Do you, children, know the origin of all these
wholesome, healing herbs?  The good Horus went out to fight against Seth,
the murderer of his father, and the horrible enemy wounded Horus in the
eye in the struggle; but the son of Osiris conquered, for good always
conquers evil.  But when Isis saw the bad wound, she pressed her son's
head to her bosom, and her heart was as sad as that of any poor human
mother that holds her suffering child in her arms.  And she thought: 'How
easy it is to give wounds, and how hard it is to heal them!' and so she
wept; one tear after another fell on the earth, and wherever they wetted
the ground there sprang up a kindly healing plant."

"Isis is good!"  cried a little girl opposite to her.  Mother says Isis
loves children when they are good."

"Your mother is right," replied Nefert.  "Isis herself has her dear
little son Horus; and every human being that dies, and that was good,
becomes a child again, and the Goddess makes it her own, and takes it to
her breast, and nurses it with her sister Nephthys till he grows up and
can fight for his father."

Nefert observed that while she spoke one of the women was crying.  She
went up to her, and learned that her husband and her son were both dead,
the former in Syria, and the latter after his return to Egypt.  "Poor
soul!"  said Nefert.  "Now you will be very careful, that the wounds of
others may be healed.  I will tell you something more about Isis.  She
loved her husband Osiris dearly, as you did your dead husband, and I my
husband Mena, but he fell a victim to the cunning of Seth, and she could