ought up in the House of Seti, and treated him like his own son,
while the other members of the dethroned royal family were robbed of
their possessions or removed altogether.

Ani proved himself a faithful servant to Seti, and to his son, and was
trusted as a brother by the warlike and magnanimous Rameses, who however
never disguised from himself the fact that the blood in his own veins
was less purely royal than that which flowed in his cousin's.

It was required of the race of the Pharaohs of Egypt that it should be
descended from the Sun-god Ra, and the Pharaoh could boast of this high
descent only through his mother--Ani through both parents.

But Rameses sat on the throne, held the sceptre with a strong hand, and
thirteen young sons promised to his house the lordship over Egypt to all
eternity.

When, after the death of his warlike father, he went to fresh conquests
in the north, he appointed Ani, who had proved himself worthy as
governor of the province of Kush, to the regency of the kingdom.

A vehement character often over estimates the man who is endowed with
a quieter temperament, into whose nature he cannot throw himself, and
whose excellences he is unable to imitate; so it happened that the
deliberate and passionless nature of his cousin impressed the fiery and
warlike Rameses.

Ani appeared to be devoid of ambition, or the spirit of enterprise; he
accepted the dignity that was laid upon him with apparent reluctance,
and seemed a particularly safe person, because he had lost both wife and
child, and could boast of no heir.

He was a man of more than middle height; his features were remarkably
regular--even beautifully, cut, but smooth and with little expression.
His clear blue eyes and thin lips gave no evidence of the emotions that
filled his heart; on the contrary, his countenance wore a soft smile
that could adapt itself to haughtiness, to humility, and to a variety of
shades of feeling, but which could never be entirely banished from his
face.

He had listened with affable condescension to the complaint of a landed
proprietor, whose cattle had been driven off for the king's army, and
had promised that his case should be enquired into. The plundered man
was leaving full of hope; but when the scribe who sat at the feet of the
Regent enquired to whom the investigation of this encroachment of the
troops should be entrusted, Ani said: "Each one must bring a victim to
the war; it must remain among the