o? they've
bewitched him, they've ruined him in this wicked land. Whatever a man
would do himself, he thinks others are capable of. Aye, you may look as
angry as you like; it matters but little to me. What can it matter indeed
to an old man, who has served the same family faithfully and honestly for
sixty years, if they call him at last a rogue, a knave, a traitor, nay
even a murderer, if it should take their fancy."

And the scalding tears flowed down over the old man's cheeks, sorely
against his will.

The easily-moved Phanes clapped him on the shoulder and said, turning to
Nebenchari: "Hib is a faithful fellow. I give you leave to call me a
rascal, if he has taken one single obolus from me."

The physician did not need Phanes' assurance; he had known his old
servant too well and too long not to be able to read his simple, open
features, on which his innocence was written as clearly as in the pages
of an open book. "I did not mean to reproach you, old Hib," he said
kindly, coming up to him. "How can any one be so angry at a simple
question?"

"Perhaps you expect me to be pleased at such a shameful suspicion?"

"No, not that; but at all events now you can tell me what has happened at
our house since I left."

"A pretty story that is! Why only to think of it makes my mouth as
bitter, as if I were chewing wormwood."

"You said I had been robbed."

"Yes indeed: no one was ever so robbed before. There would have been some
comfort if the knaves had belonged to the thieves' caste, for then we
should have got the best part of our property back again, and should not
after all have been worse off than many another; but when . . ."

[The cunning son of the architect, who robbed the treasure-house of
Rhampsinitus was, according to Herodotus, (II. 120), severely
punished; but in Diod. I. 80. we see that when thieves acknowledged
themselves to the authorities to be such, they were not punished,
though a strict watch was set over them. According to Diodorus,
there was a president of the thieves' caste, from whom the stolen
goods could be reclaimed on relinquishment of a fourth part of the
same. This strange rule possibly owed its rise to the law, which
compelled every Egyptian to appear once in each year before the
authorities of his district and give an account of his means of
subsistence. Those who made false statements were punished with
death. Diod. I. 77. Thus no one who valued his