second heap he seemed to
be thinking deeply and making calculations.

"The people are wont to call thee Iron Man, but I believe thou art
golden!" he ruminated, and then suddenly, "For these heaps of riches,
large and small, what desirest thou of all my possessions? Wilt thou
have all my grain and half my land? Shall I give to thee all my fields
which cannot be seen from the palace here?"

"Why should I wish thy land when I have no cattle to till it, nor mules
to gather the harvest? In lieu of the land, give me only a share of what
it should produce for a few years. Now give heed to the bargain I will
make with thee. If thou wilt deliver to my storehouses, upon the
plateau, all the gathered grain of thy past two crops, and all the grain
thou shalt gather from this growing crop (save only what thou needest
for seed), and half of each of the crops of the three succeeding
years,--provided, however, that you assure me each year as much as thy
thousand mules can carry in an hundred journeys;--then thou mayest keep
all this store of gold, which is, indeed, all that both of us from the
Blue Star possess."

He seemed to be revolving these terms slowly in his mind to be sure of
them, and then called out to his servants,--

"Bring in spiced wine, and bid my Chief of Harvests enter! He shall be
witness that Hotep agrees to this compact, and, should I die before it
is fulfilled, he shall see that it is carried out to the last year. But
wilt thou leave all this gold with me now, or must I wait until the
harvests are delivered?"

"What Hotep promiseth me I believe, as certainly as if it were done
already. I will leave the gold with thee, knowing thou wilt perform the
contract in every item; but if thou failest in any year, thou shalt
return to me one small gold-piece for each trip that thy thousand mules
fall short of an hundred."

He agreed, and arose and recited the terms of the compact to his Chief
of Harvests, charging him to carry it out, and to cause to be engraved a
small stone cylinder as a permanent record of its provisions, as it was
their custom to do in such cases. Then filling three goblets with rich
spiced wine, he exclaimed,--

"For thy sake, O most generous youth, may the Nasr-Nil fondly nurse
every harvest, and may the gentle Snowless Month ripen them in such
abundance as they have never shown before! And may Hotep's mules grow
old and weary bearing the plenty to thy storehouses!"

CHAPTER X

Humani