--had both followed her
example. Something serious had occurred; but when she had gone to the
house to pick up further information, old Betta, who was particularly
snappish with her, had refused her admission quite rudely.

Then, on their way hither, she and Heliodora had had a painful adventure;
the chariot, lent by Neforis to convey them as far as the edge of the
necropolis, was stopped on the way by a troop of Arab horse, and they
were subjected to a catechism by the leader.

So they entered the house of "Medea of the curls," as the common people
called the witch, with uneasy and throbbing hearts; they were received,
however, with such servile politeness that they soon recovered
themselves, and even the timid Heliodora began to breathe freely again.
The sorceress knew this time who Katharina was, and paid more respectful
attention to the daughter of the wealthy widow.

The young crescent moon had risen, a circumstance which Medea declared
enabled her to see more clearly into the future than she could do at the
time of the Luna-negers as she called the moonless night. Her inward
vision had been held in typhornian darkness at the time of their first
visit, by the influence of some hostile power. She had felt this as soon
as they had quitted her, but to-day she saw clearer. Her mind's eye was
as clear as a silver mirror, she had purified it by three days' fasting
and not a mote could escape her sight.--"Help, ye children of Horapollo!
Help, Hapi and Ye three holy ones!"

"Oh, my beauties, my beauties!" she went on enthusiastically. "Hundreds
of great dames have proved my art, but such splendid fortunes I never
before saw crowding round any two heads as round yours. Do you hear how
the cauldrons of fortune are seething? The very lids lift! Amazing,
amazing."

She stretched out her hand towards the vessels as though conjuring them
and said solemnly: "Abundance of happiness; brimming over, brimming over!
Bursting storehouses! Zefa-oo Metramao. Return, return, to the right
levels, the right heights, the right depth, the right measure! Your Elle
Mei-Measurer, Leveller, require them, Techuti, require them, double
Ibis!"

She made them both sit down on elegant seats in front of the boiling
pots, tied the "thread of Anubis" round the ring-finger of each, asked in
a low whisper between muttered words of incantation for a hair of each,
and after placing the hairs both in one cauldron she cried out with wild
vehemence, as t