est bidder. The young and beautiful
ones were paid for high, but even the older ones were too dear for me.

"Quite at the last a blind woman was led forward, and a withered-looking
woman who was dumb, as the auctioneer, who generally praised up the
merits of the prisoners, informed the buyers. The blind woman had
strong hands, and was bought by a tavern-keeper, for whom she turns the
handmill to this day; the dumb woman held a child in her arms, and no
one could tell whether she was young or old. She looked as though she
already lay in her coffin, and the little one as though he would go
under the grass before her. And her hair was red, burning red, the very
color of Typhon. Her white pale face looked neither bad nor good, only
weary, weary to death. On her withered white arms blue veins ran like
dark cords, her hands hung feebly down, and in them hung the child. If a
wind were to rise, I thought to myself, it would blow her away, and the
little one with her.

"The auctioneer asked for a bid. All were silent, for the dumb shadow
was of no use for work; she was half-dead, and a burial costs money.

"So passed several minutes. Then the auctioneer stepped up to her, and
gave her a blow with his whip, that she might rouse herself up, and
appear less miserable to the buyers. She shivered like a person in a
fever, pressed the child closer to her, and looked round at every one as
though seeking for help--and me full in the face. What happened now was
a real wonder, for her eyes were bigger than any that I ever saw, and a
demon dwelt in them that had power over me and ruled me to the end, and
that day it bewitched me for the first time.

"It was not hot and I had drunk nothing, and yet I acted against my own
will and better judgment when, as her eyes fell upon me, I bid all
that I possessed in order to buy her. I might have had her cheaper! My
companions laughed at me, the auctioneer shrugged his shoulders as he
took my money, but I took the child on my arm, helped the woman up,
carried her in a boat over the Nile, loaded a stone-cart with my
miserable property, and drove her like a block of lime home to the old
people.

"My mother shook her head, and my father looked as if he thought me mad;
but neither of them said a word. They made up a bed for her, and on my
spare nights I built that ruined thing hard by--it was a tidy hut once.
Soon my mother grew fond of the child. It was quite small, and we called
it Pennu--[Pennu i