ure than uncertainty, and generally, when
in suspense, looks forward to bad rather than to good news. And the
bearers of ill ride faster than the messengers of weal.

The Regent Ani resided in a building adjoining the king's palace. His
business-quarters surrounded an immensely wide court, and consisted of
a great number of rooms opening on to this court, in which numerous
scribes worked with their chief. On the farther side was a large,
veranda-like hall open at the front, with a roof supported by pillars.

Here Ani was accustomed to hold courts of justice, and to receive
officers, messengers, and petitioners. To-day he sat, visible to all
comers, on a costly throne in this hall, surrounded by his numerous
followers, and overlooking the crowd of people whom the guardians of the
peace guided with long staves, admitting them in troops into the court
of the "High Gate," and then again conducting them out.

What he saw and heard was nothing joyful, for from each group
surrounding a scribe arose a cry of woe. Few and far between were those
who had to tell of the rich booty that had fallen to their friends.

An invisible web woven of wailing and tears seemed to envelope the
assembly.

Here men were lamenting and casting dust upon their heads, there women
were rending their clothes, shrieking loudly, and crying as they waved
their veils "oh, my husband! oh, my father! oh, my brother!"

Parents who had received the news of the death of their son fell on each
other's neck weeping; old men plucked out their grey hair and beard;
young women beat their forehead and breast, or implored the scribes
who read out the lists to let them see for themselves the name of the
beloved one who was for ever torn from them.

The passionate stirring of a soul, whether it be the result of joy or of
sorrow, among us moderns covers its features with a veil, which it had
no need of among the ancients.

Where the loudest laments sounded, a restless little being might be seen
hurrying from group to group; it was Nemu, Katuti's dwarf, whom we know.

Now he stood near a woman of the better class, dissolved in tears
because her husband had fallen in the last battle.

"Can you read?" he asked her; "up there on the architrave is the name
of Rameses, with all his titles. Dispenser of life,' he is called. Aye
indeed; he can create--widows; for he has all the husbands killed."

Before the astonished woman could reply, he stood by a man sunk in woe,