oncern me. Do
what you like with the souls of men; I seek to know something of their
bodies, and patch them when they are damaged as well as may be."

"Nay-Toth be praised, at least you need not deny that you are master in
that art."

[Toth is the god of the learned and of physicians. The Ibis was
sacred to him, and he was usually represented as Ibis-headed. Ra
created him "a beautiful light to show the name of his evil enemy."
Originally the Dfoon-god, he became the lord of time and measure.
He is the weigher, the philosopher among the gods, the lord of
writing, of art and of learning. The Greeks called him Hermes
Trismegistus, i.e. threefold or "very great" which was, in fact, in
imitation of the Egyptians, whose name Toth or Techud signified
twofold, in the same way "very great"]

"Who is master," asked Nebsecht, "excepting God? I can do nothing,
nothing at all, and guide my instruments with hardly more certainty than
a sculptor condemned to work in the dark."

"Something like the blind Resu then," said Pentaur smiling, "who
understood painting better than all the painters who could see."

"In my operations there is a 'better' and a 'worse;'" said Nebsecht,
"but there is nothing 'good.'"

"Then we must be satisfied with the 'better,' and I have come to claim
it," said Pentaur.

"Are you ill?"

"Isis be praised, I feel so well that I could uproot a palm-tree, but I
would ask you to visit a sick girl. The princess Bent-Anat--"

"The royal family has its own physicians."

"Let me speak! the princess Bent-Anat has run over a young girl, and the
poor child is seriously hurt."

"Indeed," said the student reflectively. "Is she over there in the city,
or here in the Necropolis?"

"Here. She is in fact the daughter of a paraschites."

"Of a paraschites?" exclaimed Nebsecht, once more slipping the rabbit
under the table, "then I will go."

"You curious fellow. I believe you expect to find something strange
among the unclean folk."

"That is my affair; but I will go. What is the man's name?"

"Pinem."

"There will be nothing to be done with him," muttered the student,
"however--who knows?"

With these words he rose, and opening a tightly closed flask he dropped
some strychnine on the nose and in the mouth of the rabbit, which
immediately ceased to breathe. Then he laid it in a box and said, "I am
ready."

"But you cannot go out of doors in this stained dress."

The physicia