ow; and when I came in he was sitting on the cupboard up there,
looking just like a black slave that works night and day in a corn-mill;
he had got hold of the roll which contained all my observations on the
structure of animals--the result of years of study-and was looking at it
gravely with his head on one side. I wanted to take the book from him,
but he fled with the roll, sprang out of window, let himself down to the
edge of the well, and tore and rubbed the manuscript to pieces in a rage.
I leaped out after him, but he jumped into the bucket, took hold of the
chain, and let himself down, grinning at me in mockery, and when I drew
him up again he jumped into the water with the remains of the book."

"And the poor wretch is drowned?" asked Pentaur.

"I fished him up with the bucket, and laid him to dry in the sun; but he
had been tasting all sorts of medicines, and he died at noon. My
observations are gone! Some of them certainly are still left; however, I
must begin again at the beginning. You see apes object as much to my
labors as sages; there lies the beast on the shelf."

Pentaur had laughed at his friend's story, and then lamented his loss;
but now he said anxiously:

"He is lying there on the shelf? But you forget that he ought to have
been kept in the little oratory of Toth near the library. He belongs to
the sacred dogfaced apes,

[The dog faced baboon, Kynokephalos, was sacred to Toth as the
Moongod. Mummies of these apes have been found at Thebes and
Hermopolis, and they are often represented as reading with much
gravity. Statues of them have been found to great quantities, and
there is a particularly life-like picture of a Kynokephalos in
relief on the left wall of the library of the temple of Isis at
Philoe.]

and all the sacred marks were found upon him. The librarian gave him into
your charge to have his bad eye cured."

"That was quite well," answered Nebsecht carelessly.

"But they will require the uninjured corpse of you, to embalm it," said
Pentaur.

"Will they?" muttered Nebsecht; and he looked at his friend like a boy
who is asked for an apple that has long been eaten.

"And you have already been doing something with it," said Pentaur, in a
tone of friendly vexation.

The leech nodded. "I have opened him, and examined his heart.'

"You are as much set on hearts as a coquette!" said Pentaur. "What is
become of the human heart that the old paraschites was to get f