eir day and yet
they need houses and pyramids and painted chambers in which to sleep,
whereas if they believed the faith they practised, they would have been
content to give their bones to feed the earth they fed on, and fill
heaven with their souls."

"Do your people thus, Bes?"

"For the most part, Master. Our dead kings and great ones we enclose in
pillars of crystal, but we do this that they may serve a double purpose.
One is that the pillars may support the roof of their successors, and
the other, that those who inherit their goods may please themselves by
reflecting how much handsomer they are than those who went before them.
For no mummy looks really nice, Master, at least with its wrappings off,
and our kings are put naked into the crystal."

"And what becomes of the rest, Bes?"

"Their bodies go to the earth or the water and the Grasshopper carries
off their souls to--where, Master?"

"I do not know, Bes."

"No, Master, no one knows, except the lady Amada and perhaps the holy
Tanofir. Here I think is the entrance to his hole," and he pulled up his
beast with a jerk at what looked like the doorway of a tomb.

Apparently we were expected, for a tall and proud-looking girl clad in
white and with extraordinarily dark eyes, appeared in the doorway and
asked in a soft voice if we were the noble Shabaka and Bes, his slave.

"I am Shabaka," I answered, "and this is Bes, who is not my slave but a
free citizen of Egypt."

The girl contemplated the dwarf with her big eyes, then said,

"And other things, I think."

"What things?" inquired Bes with interest, as he stared at this
beautiful lady.

"A very brave and clever man and one perhaps who is more than he seems
to be?"

"Who has been telling you about me?" exclaimed Bes anxiously.

"No one, O Bes, at least not that I can remember."

"Not that you can remember! Then who and what are you who learn things
you know not how?"

"I am named Karema and desert-bred, and my office is that of Cup to the
holy Tanofir."

"If hermits drink from such a cup I shall turn hermit," said Bes,
laughing. "But how can a woman be a man's cup and what kind of a wine
does he drink from her?"

"The wine of wisdom, O Bes," she replied colouring a little, for like
many Arabs of high blood she was very fair in hue.

"Wine of wisdom," said Bes. "From such cups most drink the wine of
folly, or sometimes of madness."

"The holy Tanofir awaits you," she interrupted, and turnin