er failed to utter when
any good fortune had befallen him, to-day died on his lips. Close before
him he saw the goal of his desires; there, under his eyes, lay the magic
spring longed for for years. A few steps farther, and he might slake at
its copious stream his thirst both for love and for revenge.

While he followed the wife of Mena, and replaced the phial carefully in
his girdle, so as to lose no drop of the precious fluid which, according
to the prescription of the old woman, he needed to use again, warning
voices spoke in his breast, to which he usually listened as to a
fatherly admonition; but at this moment he mocked at them, and even gave
outward expression to the mood that ruled him--for he flung up his right
hand like a drunken man, who turns away from the preacher of morality on
his way to the wine-cask; and yet passion held him so closely ensnared,
that the thought that he should live through the swift moments which
would change him from an honest man into a criminal, hardly dawned,
darkly on his soul. He had hitherto dared to indulge his desire for
love and revenge in thought only, and had left it to the Gods to act
for themselves; now he had taken his cause out of the hand of the
Celestials, and gone into action without them, and in spite of them.

The sorceress Hekt passed him; she wanted to see the woman for whom she
had given him the philter. He perceived her and shuddered, but soon the
old woman vanished among the rocks muttering.

"Look at the fellow with six toes. He makes himself comfortable with the
heritage of Assa."

In the middle of the valley walked Nefert and the pioneer, with the
princess Bent-Anat and Pentaur who accompanied her.

When these two had come out of the hut of the paraschites, they stood
opposite each other in silence. The royal maiden pressed her hand to
her heart, and, like one who is thirsty, drank in the pure air of the
mountain valley with deeply drawn breath; she felt as if released from
some overwhelming burden, as if delivered from some frightful danger.

At last she turned to her companion, who gazed earnestly at the ground.

"What an hour!" she said.

Pentaur's tall figure did not move, but he bowed his head in assent, as
if he were in a dream. Bent-Anat now saw him for the first time in fall
daylight; her large eyes rested on him with admiration, and she asked:

"Art thou the priest, who yesterday, after my first visit to this house,
so readily restored me t