known as laws, in
passing through which each must bow his head, whoever he be, erpatr or
earth-worker. In this edifice are various entrances and exits, narrow
for the weak and small, very wide, nay, commodious for the powerful."

"If this be so," thought the prince, as the idea flashed on him, "I
will make the order which shall please me."

At that moment Ramses remembered two people, the liberated black who
without waiting for command had been ready to die for him, and that
unknown priest.

"If I had more like them, my will would have meaning in Egypt and
beyond it," said he to himself, and he felt an inextinguishable desire
to find that priest.

"He is, in all likelihood, the man who restrained the crowd from
attacking my house. On the one hand he knows law to perfection, on the
other he knows how to manage multitudes."

"A man beyond price! I must have him."

From that time Ramses, in a small boat managed by one oarsman, began to
visit the cottages in the neighborhood of his villa. Dressed in a tunic
and a great wig, in his hand a staff on which a measure was cut out,
the prince looked like an engineer studying the Nile and its overflows.

Earth-tillers gave him willingly all explanations concerning changes in
the form of land because of inundations, and at the same time they
begged that the government might think out some easier way of raising
water than by sweeps and buckets. They told too of the attack on the
house of Prince Ramses, and said that they knew not who threw the
stones. Finally they mentioned the priest who had sent the crowd away
so successfully; but who he was they knew not.

"There is," said one man, "a priest in our neighborhood who cures sore
eyes; there is one who heals wounds and sets broken arms and legs.
There are some priests who teach reading and writing; there is one who
plays on a double flute, and plays even beautifully. But that one who
was in the garden of the heir is not among them, and they know nothing
of him. Surely he must be the god Num, or some spirit watching over the
prince, may he live through eternity and always have appetite!"

"Maybe it is really some spirit," thought Ramses.

In Egypt good or evil spirits always came more easily than rain.

The water of the Nile from being ruddy became brownish, and in August,
the month of Hator, it reached one half its height. The sluices were
opened on the banks of the river, and the water began to fill the
canals quickly, a