rly income and
one hundred and sixty thousand troops, my father has barely fifty
thousand talents and one hundred and twenty thousand troops.

"And what an army! Were it not for the Greek corps, which keeps them in
order as a dog watches sheep, the Egyptian soldiers today would obey
only priests and the pharaoh would sink to the level of a miserable
nomarch."

"Whence hast Thou learned this?" asked Tutmosis, with astonishment.

"Am I not of a priestly family? And besides, they taught me when I was
not heir to the throne. Oh, when I become pharaoh after my father, may
he live through eternity! I will put my bronze-sandaled foot on their
necks. But first of all I will seize their treasures, which have always
been bloated, but which from the time of Ramses the Great have begun to
swell out, and today are so swollen that the treasure of the pharaoh is
invisible because of them."

"Woe to me and to thee!" sighed Tutmosis. "Thou hast plans under which
this hill would bend could it hear and understand them. And where are
thy forces, thy assistance, thy warriors? Against thee the whole people
will rise, led by a class of men with mighty influence. But who is on
thy rider?"

Ramses listened and fell to thinking. At last he said,

"The army."

"A considerable part of it will follow the priests."

"The Greek corps."

"A barrel of water in the Nile."

"The officials."

"Half of them belong to the priests."

The prince shook his head sadly, and was silent.

From the summit they went down by a naked and stony slope to the
opposite base of the hill. Then Tutmosis, who had pushed ahead
somewhat, cried,

"Has a charm fallen on my eyes? Look, Ramses! Why, a second Egypt is
concealed between these cliffs!"

"That must be an estate of some priest who pays no taxes," replied the
prince, bitterly.

In the depth before their feet lay a rich valley in the form of a fork
the tines of which were hidden between cliffs. At the juncture of the
tines a number of servants' huts were visible, and the beautiful little
villa of the owner or manager. Palmtrees grew there, grapes, olives,
figs with aerial roots, cypresses, even young baobabs. In the centre
flowed a rivulet, and at the source of it, some hundreds of yards
higher up, small gardens were visible.

When they had gone down among grapevines covered with ripe clusters,
they heard a woman's voice which called, or rather sang in pensive
notes:

"Where art Thou gone from me