o the indignant smith.
"You are discreet, as you proved to me only yesterday; and if I were to
tell you all I went through and endured last night you would certainly
forgive me, that I know."

"If you are not altogether mistaken!" shouted the smith. "Those must be
strange things indeed which could induce me to let such neglect of duty
and such a misdemeanor pass unpunished."

And strange things they were indeed which the old man now had to hear,
for when Klea had ended her narrative of all that had occurred during the
past night, not her eyes only but those of the old smith too were wet
with tears.

"These accursed legs!" he muttered, as his eyes met the enquiring glance
of the young girl, and he wiped the salt dew from his cheeks with the
sleeve of his coat. "Aye-a swelled foot like mine is painful, child, and
a cripple such as I am is not always strong-minded. Old women grow like
men, and old men grow like women. Ah! old age--it is bad to have such
feet as mine, but what is worse is that memory fades as years advance. I
believe now that I left the key myself in the door of the Apis-tombs last
evening, and I will send at once to Asclepiodorus, so that he may beg the
Egyptians up there to forgive me--they are indebted to me for many small
jobs."

CHAPTER XXIV.

All the black masses of clouds which during the night had darkened the
blue sky and hidden the light of the moon had now completely disappeared.
The north-east wind which rose towards morning had floated them away, and
Zeus, devourer of the clouds, had swallowed them up to the very last. It
was a glorious morning, and as the sun rose in the heavens, and pierced
and burnt up with augmenting haste the pale mist that hovered over the
Nile, and the vapor that hung--a delicate transparent veil of bluish-grey
bombyx-gauze--over the eastern slopes, the cool shades of night vanished
too from the dusky nooks of the narrow town which lay, mile-wide, along
the western bank of the river. And the intensely brilliant sunlight which
now bathed the streets and houses, the palaces and temples, the gardens
and avenues, and the innumerable vessels in the harbor of Memphis, was
associated with a glow of warmth which was welcome even there in the
early morning of a winter's day.

Boats' captains and sailors--were hurrying down to the shore of the Nile
to avail themselves of the northeast breeze to travel southwards against
the current, and sails were being hoisted and an