ngs, had put him in possession by an
accident--which was almost a miracle--of the magic potion efficacy he
never for an instant doubted?

Paaker's associates held him to be a man of quick decision, and, in
fact, in difficult cases he could act with unusual rapidity, but what
guided him in these cases, was not the swift-winged judgment of a
prepared and well-schooled brain, but usually only resulted from the
outcome of a play of question and answer.

Amulets of the most various kinds hung round his neck, and from his
girdle, all consecrated by priests, and of special sanctity or the
highest efficacy.

There was the lapis lazuli eye, which hung to his girdle by a gold
chain; When he threw it on the ground, so as to lie on the earth, if its
engraved side turned to heaven, and its smooth side lay on the ground,
he said "yes;" in the other case, on the contrary, "no." In his purse
lay always a statuette of the god Apheru, who opened roads; this he
threw down at cross-roads, and followed the direction which the pointed
snout of the image indicated. He frequently called into council the
seal-ring of his deceased father, an old family possession, which the
chief priests of Abydos had laid upon the holiest of the fourteen graves
of Osiris, and endowed with miraculous power. It consisted of a gold
ring with a broad signet, on which could be read the name of Thotmes
III., who had long since been deified, and from whom Paaker's ancestors
had derived it. If it were desirable to consult the ring, the Mohar
touched with the point of his bronze dagger the engraved sign of the
name, below which were represented three objects sacred to the Gods, and
three that were, on the contrary, profane. If he hit one of the former,
he concluded that his father--who was gone to Osiris--concurred in his
design; in the contrary case he was careful to postpone it. Often he
pressed the ring to his heart, and awaited the first living creature
that he might meet, regarding it as a messenger from his father;--if it
came to him from the right hand as an encouragement, if from the left as
a warning.

By degrees he had reduced these questionings to a system. All that he
found in nature he referred to himself and the current of his life. It
was at once touching, and pitiful, to see how closely he lived with the
Manes of his dead. His lively, but not exalted fancy, wherever he gave
it play, presented to the eye of his soul the image of his father and of
an