ifice too
great? You say that your daughter favors Hosea?"

"Yes, she did care for him," the soldier answered; "yes, he was her
heart's desire. But I compelled her to obey me, and now that she is a
widow, am I to give her to the man whom--the gods alone know with how
much difficulty--I forced her to resign? When was such an act heard of
in Egypt?"

"Ever since the men and women who dwell by the Nile have submitted, for
the sake of a great cause, to demands opposed to their wishes," replied
the priest.

"Consider all this, and remember that Hosea's ancestress--he boasted of
it in your own presence--was an Egyptian, the daughter of a man of my
own class."

"How many generations have passed to the tomb since?"

"No matter! It brings us into closer relations with him. That must
suffice. Farewell until this evening. Meanwhile, will you extend your
hospitality to Hosea's nephew and commend him to your fair daughter's
nursing; he seems in sore need of care."

CHAPTER IV.

The house of Hornecht, like nearly every other dwelling in the city, was
the scene of the deepest mourning. The men had shaved their hair, and
the women had put dust on their foreheads. The archer's wife had died
long before, but his daughter and her women received him with waving
veils and loud lamentations; for the astrologer, his brother-in-law,
had lost both his first-born son and his grandson, and the plague had
snatched its victims from the homes of many a friend.

But the senseless youth soon demanded all the care the women could
bestow, and after bathing him and binding a healing ointment on the
dangerous wound in his head, strong wine and food were placed before
him, after which, refreshed and strengthened, he obeyed the summons of
the daughter of his host.

The dust-covered, worn-out fellow was transformed into a handsome youth.
His perfumed hair fell in long curling locks from beneath the fresh
white bandage, and gold-bordered Egyptian robes from the wardrobe
of Kasana's dead husband covered his pliant bronzed limbs. He seemed
pleased with the finery of his garments, which exhaled a subtle odor of
spikenard new to his senses; for the eyes in his handsome face sparkled
brilliantly.

It was many a day since the captain's daughter, herself a woman of
unusual beauty and charm, had seen a handsomer youth. Within the year
she had married a man she did not love Kasana had returned a widow
to her father's house, which lacked a mistress,