ed the compress
on her wounded breast with a white ointment.

In a wide circle close to the wall of the room crouched several women,
young and old, friends of the paraschites, who from time to time gave
expression to their deep sympathy by a piercing cry of lamentation. One
of them rose at regular intervals to fill the earthen bowl by the side
of the physician with fresh water. As often as the sudden coolness of a
fresh compress on her hot bosom startled the sick girl, she opened
her eyes, but always soon to close them again for longer interval,
and turned them at first in surprise, and then with gentle reverence,
towards a particular spot.

These glances had hitherto been unobserved by him to whom they were
directed.

Leaning against the wall on the right hand side of the room, dressed in
his long, snow-white priest's robe, Pentaur stood awaiting the princess.
His head-dress touched the ceiling, and the narrow streak of light,
which fell through the opening in the roof, streamed on his handsome
head and his breast, while all around him was veiled in twilight gloom.

Once more the suffering girl looked up, and her glance this time met
the eye of the young priest, who immediately raised his hand, and
half-mechanically, in a low voice, uttered the words of blessing; and
then once more fixed his gaze on the dingy floor, and pursued his own
reflections.

Some hours since he had come hither, obedient to the orders of Ameni,
to impress on the princess that she had defiled herself by touching
a paraschites, and could only be cleansed again by the hand of the
priests.

He had crossed the threshold of the paraschites most reluctantly, and
the thought that he, of all men, had been selected to censure a deed
of the noblest humanity, and to bring her who had done it to judgment,
weighed upon him as a calamity.

In his intercourse with his friend Nebsecht, Pentaur had thrown off many
fetters, and given place to many thoughts that his master would have
held sinful and presumptuous; but at the same time he acknowledged the
sanctity of the old institutions, which were upheld by those whom he had
learned to regard as the divinely-appointed guardians of the spiritual
possessions of God's people; nor was he wholly free from the pride of
caste and the haughtiness which, with prudent intent, were inculcated in
the priests. He held the common man, who put forth his strength to win a
maintenance for his belongings by honest bodily la