t, for half of his coming crops."

Thereupon he bade me remain, and sent for Hotep, and said to him,--

"Behold, have not the harvests of seven years made Pharaoh the richest
man upon Ptah, so that he covets no more grain, but only things of rare
beauty? And are not thy harvests reduced by half through thy compact
with him from the Blue Star? Now, if thou likest to tempt the Pharaoh
with an hundred of thy golden coins, and one-and-twenty of the
moon-sized discs of gold such as thou wearest there, thou mayest hire
his land for the next seven years, and all his men and animals for a
like time, if thou wilt feed and nourish them; and then shall not both
banks of the great river bring forth riches, and be burdened with the
plenteous harvests of Hotep?"

"Is the Pharaoh indeed weary of rich harvests, or doth he rather itch
for my gold? Yet, had I the seed to plant all his fields, I might
consider the undertaking thou shewest me."

"Let not that delay thee," answered Zaphnath, "for I am sure he will
gladly lend to such a man as Hotep the seed thou needest until thy next
harvest be gathered."

So the matter was thus finally concluded, and I was a witness to the
compact.

Then Hotep's Chief of Harvests worked early and late to finish planting
before the Month of Midnight Snows, when the Nasr-Nil usually overflows
its banks and waters the harvest. But, as if to oblige a man so
industrious in preparing the way for it, the great river did not rise at
its customary time, and Hotep was able to finish his seeding on both
banks.

The black loam along the shores parched and crumbled, and borrowed the
look of the great desert; the feathers of darkness fell later and later,
until they began to appear with the dawn, and yet the river failed to
rise; the priests went through their perfunctory rites to placate the
god of the Overflow, and made their impotent sacrifices to tempt him to
bless the harvest; but Hotep saw the Snowless Month, which should have
ripened his grain, dawn upon fields that were dried to seas of drifting
dust and void of all vegetation. His army of men, augmented by the
Pharaoh's thousands, and his ten thousand cattle and mules, all ate and
waited and waited and ate, and yet there was no work for them. The
following spring there was no need to plough the fields, and no seed to
plant them.

When Zaphnath learned that Hotep must deliver a hundred thousand
mule-cargoes of wheat to me, or forfeit a hundred gold pi