nsellors alike should consider this necessary or fitting seemed
strange to me. The doctor jokingly suggested that they wished to keep me
permanently hypnotized, lest I should become dangerous again.

Having laid off our rifles, swords, and outer coats, I lifted my cap and
made a low bow to the youth and to the old men, but the doctor tried the
salute of the right hand upon the cheek, as he had seen the soldier do.
In answer the youth simply looked toward the twelve, waving his hand
towards us in a way which seemed to say to them, "Gentlemen, behold the
enigma!" Then, beginning with the eldest, the twelve jabbered at us in
turn, apparently in different tongues, some sibilant, some guttural, and
others with the musical cadence of frequent vowel sounds. Needless to
say, each was equally incomprehensible to us, and we did not think it
worth while to try German or English upon them. When they had finished,
they looked much vexed, and slowly wagged their beards. Then the youth
spoke something to them with a confident gesture toward himself. He
arose, and began addressing us. I suddenly stopped short in the middle
of a sentence I was whispering to the doctor. It seemed as if the youth
had ceased making mere sounds, and had begun to speak a coherent
language, a tongue which has lived ages while others have languished
into forgetfulness; a language whose words I understood, but yet the
words carried little clear meaning to me.

"Listen, Doctor! The boy is speaking Hebrew! Ancient and archaic in
form, but yet Hebrew which I understand!" And this is what he had said:

"Oh ye, who speak among yourselves, but understand only those who speak
not at all, I, Zaphnath, revealer of God's hidden things, will address
ye in my native tongue, which none but me in all the land of Kem hath
any knowledge of."

"There be two of us in Kem, O Zaphnath, who understand that tongue.
Speak on!" I cried.

But the boy stripped off his wig and beard, and, leaving the throne,
hastened toward me and laid his soft right cheek against my own with
gentle pressure.

"Comest thou, then, from the land of my father, a stranger wandering
into Kem, even as I came?" he asked.

"Nay, gentle youth, we came a vastly farther way, from another world, so
distant that thou seest it from here only as a twinkling star in the
night. But if, indeed, thou camest a wandering stranger into Kem, art
thou then the king?" He had resumed his wig and beard, and his proud
seat