r which pervaded
this locality. He had spread a coarse napkin, and carefully laid on it
the provisions which his wife had put into his satchel; first half a cake
of bread, then a little salt, and finally a radish.

But the bag was not yet empty.

He put his hand in and found a piece of meat wrapped up in two
cabbage-leaves. Old Hekt had brought a leg of a gazelle from Thebes for
Uarda, and he now saw that the women had put a piece of it into his
little sack for his refreshment. He looked at the gift with emotion, but
he did not venture to touch it, for he felt as if in doing so he should
be robbing the sick girl. While eating the bread and the radish he
contemplated the piece of meat as if it were some costly jewel, and when
a fly dared to settle on it he drove it off indignantly.

At last he tasted the meat, and thought of many former noon-day meals,
and how he had often found a flower in the satchel, that Uarda had placed
there to please him, with the bread. His kind old eyes filled with tears,
and his whole heart swelled with gratitude and love. He looked up, and
his glance fell on the table, and he asked himself how he would have felt
if instead of the old priest, robbed of his heart, the sunshine of his
old age, his granddaughter, were lying there motionless. A cold shiver
ran over him, and he felt that his own heart would not have been too
great a price to pay for her recovery. And yet! In the course of his long
life he had experienced so much suffering and wrong, that he could not
imagine any hope of a better lot in the other world. Then he drew out the
bond Nebsecht had given him, held it up with both hands, as if to show it
to the Immortals, and particularly to the judges in the hall of truth and
judgment, that they might not reckon with him for the crime he had
committed--not for himself but for another--and that they might not
refuse to justify Rui, whom he had robbed of his heart.

While he thus lifted his soul in devotion, matters were getting warm
outside the dissecting room. He thought he heard his name spoken, and
scarcely had he raised his head to listen when a taricheut came in and
desired him to follow him.

In front of the rooms, filled with resinous odors and incense, in which
the actual process of embalming was carried on, a number of taricheutes
were standing and looking at an object in an alabaster bowl. The knees of
the old man knocked together as he recognized the heart of the beast
which