f Seti with gifts and offerings. He will
not listen to his mother, but thou hast influence with him. He meditates
frightful things, and if he cannot be terrified by threats of punishment
from the Immortals, he will raise his hand against Mena, and perhaps--"

"Against the king," interrupted Ameni gravely. "I know it, and I will
speak to him."

"Thanks, oh a thousand thanks!" cried the widow, and she seized the
high-priests robe to kiss it. "It was thou who soon after his birth didst
tell my husband that he was born under a lucky star, and would grow to be
an honor and an ornament to his house and to his country. And now--now he
will ruin himself in this world, and the next."

"What I foretold of your son," said Ameni, "shall assuredly be fulfilled,
for the ways of the Gods are not as the ways of men."

"Thy words do me good!" cried Setchem. "None can tell what fearful terror
weighed upon my heart, when I made up my mind to come here. But thou dost
not yet know all. The great masts of cedar, which Paaker sent from
Lebanon to Thebes to bear our banners, and ornament our gateway, were
thrown to the ground at sunrise by the frightful wind."

"Thus shall your son's defiant spirit be broken," said Ameni; "But for
you, if you have patience, new joys shall arise."

"I thank thee again," said Setchem. But something yet remains to be said.
I know that I am wasting the time that thou dost devote to thy family,
and I remember thy saying once that here in Thebes thou wert like a
pack-Horse with his load taken off, and free to wander over a green
meadow. I will not disturb thee much longer--but the Gods sent me such a
wonderful vision. Paaker would not listen to me, and I went back into my
room full of sorrow; and when at last, after the sun had risen, I fell
asleep for a few minutes, I dreamed I saw before me the poet Pentaur, who
is wonderfully like my dead husband in appearance and in voice. Paaker
went up to him, and abused him violently, and threatened him with his
fist; the priest raised his arms in prayer, just as I saw him yesterday
at the festival--but not in devotion, but to seize Paaker, and wrestle
with him. The struggle did not last long, for Paaker seemed to shrink up,
and lost his human form, and fell at the poet's feet--not my son, but a
shapeless lump of clay such as the potter uses to make jars of."

"A strange dream!" exclaimed Ameni, not without agitation. "A very
strange dream, but it bodes you good. Clay,