d wife, the lady
Nefert. I can only cover the road very slowly with my little legs, while
the hoofs of your horses devour the way-as a crocodile does his prey."

"Get up!" said Paaker. "Did you come here on foot?"

"No, my lord," replied Nemu, "on an ass; but a demon entered into the
beast, and has struck it with sickness. I had to leave it on the road.
The beasts of Anubis will have a better supper than we to-night."

"Things are not done handsomely then at your mistress's house?" asked
Paaker.

"We still have bread," replied Nemu, "and the Nile is full of water.
Much meat is not necessary for women and dwarfs, but our last cattle
take a form which is too hard for human teeth."

The pioneer did not understand the joke, and looked enquiringly at the
dwarf.

"The form of money," said the little man, "and that cannot be chewed;
soon that will be gone too, and then the point will be to find a recipe
for making nutritious cakes out of earth, water, and palm-leaves. It
makes very little difference to me, a dwarf does not need much--but the
poor tender lady!"

Paaker touched his horses with such a violent stroke of his whip that
they reared high, and it took all his strength to control their spirit.

"The horses' jaws will be broken," muttered the slave behind. "What a
shame with such fine beasts!"

"Have you to pay for them?" growled Paaker. Then he turned again to the
dwarf, and asked:

"Why does Mena let the ladies want?"

"He no longer cares for his wife," replied the dwarf, casting his eyes
down sadly. "At the last division of the spoil he passed by the gold and
silver; and took a foreign woman into his tent. Evil demons have blinded
him, for where is there a woman fairer than Nefert?"

"You love your mistress."

"As my very eyes!"

During this conversation they had arrived at the terrace-temple. Paaker
threw the reins to the slave, ordered him to wait with Nemu, and turned
to the gate-keeper to explain to him, with the help of a handful of
gold, his desire of being conducted to Pentaur, the chief of the temple.

The gate-keeper, swinging a censer before him with a hasty action,
admitted him into the sanctuary. "You will find him on the third
terrace," he said, "but he is no longer our superior."

"They said so in the temple of Seti, whence I have just come," replied
Paaker.

The porter shrugged his shoulders with a sneer, and said: "The palm-tree
that is quickly set up falls down more quickly still