es are apt
to cut their fingers. Also give no more evil counsel to your Master
on matters that have to do with woman. Now farewell. Let me hear how
fortune favours you from time to time, Shabaka, for you take part in a
great game, such as I loved in my youth before I became a holy hermit.
Oh! if they had listened to me, things would have been different in
Egypt to-day. But it was written otherwise, and as ever, women were the
scribes. Good night, good night, good night! I am glad that my thought
reached you yonder in the East, and taught you what to say and do. It
is well to be wise sometimes, for others' sake, but not for our own, oh!
not for our own."

"Master," said Bes as we ambled homewards beneath the stars, "the holy
Tanofir is a man for thought to feed on, since having climbed to the
topmost peak of holiness, he does not seem to like its cold air and
warns off those who would follow in his footsteps."

"Then he might have spared himself the pains in your case, Bes, or in my
own for that matter, since we shall never come so high."

"No, Master, and I am glad to have his leave to stay lower down, since
that hot place of dead bulls is not one which I wish to inhabit in my
age, making use of a maiden to stare into a pot of water, and there read
marvels, which I could invent better for myself after a jug or two of
wine. Oh! the holy Tanofir is quite right. If these things are going
to happen let them happen, for we cannot change them by knowing of them
beforehand. Who wishes to know, Master, if his throat will be cut?"

"Or that he will be married," I suggested.

"Just so, Master, seeing that such prophecies end in becoming truths
because we make them true, feeling that we must. Thus, now I must marry
yonder Karema if she will marry me for fear lest I should prove the holy
Tanofir to be what he called me--a liar."

I laughed and then asked Bes if he had taken note of what the seeress
said of our flight south and our return thence with a great army of
black men armed with bows.

"Yes, Master," he answered gravely, "and I think this army can be none
other than that of the Ethiopians of whom by right I am the King. This
very night I send messengers to tell those who rule in my place that I
still live and am changing my mind on the matter of marriage. Also that
if I do change it I may return to them, the wisest man who ever wore the
crown of Ethiopia, having journeyed all about the world and collected
much kn