, over the feeble signs
which the iron hand of the charioteer had scrawled on the papyrus for
her whose slender fingers could guide the reed pen with firmness and
decision.

She examined the letter, and at last said, with tears in her eyes:

"Nothing! I will go to my room, mother."

Katuti kissed her and said, "Hear first what your brother writes."

But Nefert shook her head, turned away in silence, and disappeared into
the house.

Katuti was not very friendly to her son-in-law, but her heart clung
to her handsome, reckless son, the very image of her lost husband,
the favorite of women, and the gayest youth among the young nobles who
composed the chariot-guard of the king.

How fully he had written to-day--he who weilded the reed-pen so
laboriously.

This really was a letter; while, usually, he only asked in the fewest
words for fresh funds for the gratification of his extravagant tastes.

This time she might look for thanks, for not long since he must have
received a considerable supply, which she had abstracted from the income
of the possessions entrusted to her by her son-in-law.

She began to read.

The cheerfulness, with which she had met the dwarf, was insincere, and
had resembled the brilliant colors of the rainbow, which gleam over
the stagnant waters of a bog. A stone falls into the pool, the colors
vanish, dim mists rise up, and it becomes foul and clouded.

The news which her son's letter contained fell, indeed, like a block of
stone on Katuti's soul.

Our deepest sorrows always flow from the same source as might have
filled us with joy, and those wounds burn the fiercest which are
inflicted by a hand we love.

The farther Katuti went in the lamentably incorrect epistle--which she
could only decipher with difficulty--which her darling had written to
her, the paler grew her face, which she several times covered with her
trembling hands, from which the letter dropped.

Nemu squatted on the earth near her, and followed all her movements.

When she sprang forward with a heart-piercing scream, and pressed her
forehead to a rough palmtrunk, he crept up to her, kissed her feet, and
exclaimed with a depth of feeling that overcame even Katuti, who was
accustomed to hear only gay or bitter speeches from the lips of her
jester--

"Mistress! lady! what has happened?"

Katuti collected herself, turned to him, and tried to speak; but her
pale lips remained closed, and her eyes gazed dimly into vacancy