guards of the
tombs of Apis and of the temples of the Necropolis--a commanding officer
of the Diadoches had arrived at Memphis, who had ordered them to break up
at once, and to withdraw into the capital before nightfall. They were not
to be relieved by other mercenaries till the next morning.

All this Klea learned from a messenger from the Egyptian temple in the
Necropolis, who recognized her, and who was going to Memphis,
commissioned by the priests of Osiris-Apis and Sokari to convey a
petition to the king, praying that fresh troops might be promptly sent to
replace those now withdrawn.

For some time she went on side by side with this messenger, but soon she
found that she could not keep up with his hurried pace, and had to fall
behind. In front of another tavern sat the officers of the troops, whose
noisy mirth she had heard as she passed the former one; they were sitting
over their wine and looking on at the dancing of two Egyptian girls, who
screeched like cackling hens over their mad leaps, and who so effectually
riveted the attention of the spectators, who were beating time for them
by clapping their hands, that Klea, accelerating her step, was able to
slip unobserved past the wild crew. All these scenes, nay everything she
met with on the high-road, scared the girl who was accustomed to the
silence and the solemn life of the temple of Serapis, and she therefore
struck into a side path that probably also led to the city which she
could already see lying before her with its pylons, its citadel and its
houses, veiled in evening mist. In a quarter of an hour at most she would
have crossed the desert, and reach the fertile meadow land, whose emerald
hue grew darker and darker every moment. The sun was already sinking to
rest behind the Libyan range, and soon after, for twilight is short in
Egypt, she was wrapped in the darkness of night. The westwind, which had
begun to blow even at noon, now rose higher, and seemed to pursue her
with its hot breath and the clouds of sand it carried with it from the
desert.

She must certainly be approaching water, for she heard the deep pipe of
the bittern in the reeds, and fancied she breathed a moister air. A few
steps more, and her foot sank in mud; and she now perceived that she was
standing on the edge of a wide ditch in which tall papyrus-plants were
growing. The side path she had struck into ended at this plantation, and
there was nothing to be done but to turn about, and