estress, blockhead!"

"And Rui was prophet of the temple of Hatasu," added the joiner.

"The priests over there are all hangers-on of the old royal house, that I
know," asserted a baker.

"That's no secret!" cried the cobbler. "The old times were better than
these too. The war upsets everything, and quite respectable people go
barefoot because they cannot pay for shoe-leather. Rameses is a great
warrior, and the son of Ra, but what can he do without the Gods; and they
don't seem to like to stay in Thebes any longer; else why should the
heart of the sacred ram seek a new dwelling in the Necropolis, and in the
breast of an adherent of the old--"

"Hold your tongue," warned the basket-maker. "Here comes one of the
watch."

"I must go back to work," said the baker. "I have my hands quite full for
the feast to-morrow."

"And I too," said the shoemaker with a sigh, "for who would follow the
king of the Gods through the Necropolis barefoot."

"You must earn a good deal," cried the basket-maker. "We should do better
if we had better workmen," replied the shoemaker, "but all the good hands
are gone to the war. One has to put up with stupid youngsters. And as for
the women! My wife must needs have a new gown for the procession, and
bought necklets for the children. Of course we must honor the dead, and
they repay it often by standing by us when we want it--but what I pay for
sacrifices no one can tell. More than half of what I earn goes in them--"

"In the first grief of losing my poor wife," said the baker, "I promised
a small offering every new moon, and a greater one every year. The
priests will not release us from our vows, and times get harder and
harder. And my dead wife owes me a grudge, and is as thankless as she was
is her lifetime; for when she appears to me in a dream she does not give
me a good word, and often torments me."

"She is now a glorified all-seeing spirit," said the basket-maker's wife,
"and no doubt you were faithless to her. The glorified souls know all
that happens, and that has happened on earth."

The baker cleared his throat, having no answer ready; but the shoemaker
exclaimed:

"By Anubis, the lord of the under-world, I hope I may die before my old
woman! for if she finds out down there all I have done in this world, and
if she may be changed into any shape she pleases, she will come to me
every night, and nip me like a crab, and sit on me like a mountain."

"And if you die first," said