exclaimed the Regent; he threw a purse into Hekt's lap,
and added, as he prepared to leave her: "If anything happens to either of
the birds let me know at once by Nemu."

Ani went down the hill, and walked towards the neighboring tomb of his
father; but Hekt laughed as she looked after him, and muttered to
herself:

"Now the fool will take care of me for the sake of his bird! That
smiling, spiritless, indolent-minded man would rule Egypt! Am I then so
much wiser than other folks, or do none but fools come to consult Hekt?
But Rameses chose Ani to represent him! perhaps because he thinks that
those who are not particularly clever are not particularly dangerous. If
that is what he thought, he was not wise, for no one usually is so
self-confident and insolent as just such an idiot."

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Age when usually even bad liquor tastes of honey
How easy it is to give wounds, and how hard it is to heal
Kisra called wine the soap of sorrow
No one so self-confident and insolent as just such an idiot
The mother of foresight looks backwards

UARDA

Volume 8.

By Georg Ebers

CHAPTER XXXIII.

An hour later, Ani, in rich attire, left his father's tomb, and drove his
brilliant chariot past the witch's cave, and the little cottage of
Uarda's father.

Nemu squatted on the step, the dwarf's usual place. The little man looked
down at the lately rebuilt hut, and ground his teeth, when, through an
opening in the hedge, he saw the white robe of a man, who was sitting by
Uarda.

The pretty child's visitor was prince Rameri, who had crossed the Nile in
the early morning, dressed as a young scribe of the treasury, to obtain
news of Pentaur--and to stick a rose into Uarda's hair.

This purpose was, indeed, the more important of the two, for the other
must, in point of time at any rate, be the second.

He found it necessary to excuse himself to his own conscience with a
variety of cogent reasons. In the first place the rose, which lay
carefully secured in a fold of his robe, ran great danger of fading if he
first waited for his companions near the temple of Seti; next, a hasty
return from thence to Thebes might prove necessary; and finally, it
seemed to him not impossible that Bent-Anat might send a master of the
ceremonies after him, and if that happened any delay might frustrate his
purpose.

His heart beat loud and violently, not for love of the maiden, but
b