ttentively at Pentaur and at Bent-Anat
while she spoke; then he said: "Thou, princess, art like the moon, and
thy companion is like the Sun-god Dusare. Besides Abocharabos," and he
struck his breast, "and his wife, I know no pair that are like you two. I
myself will conduct you to Hebron with some of my best men of war. But
haste will be necessary, for I must be back before the traitor who now
rules over Mizraim,--[The Semitic name of Egypt]--and who persecutes you,
can send fresh forces against us. Now you can go down again to the tents,
not a hen is missing. To-morrow before daybreak we will be off."

At the door of the hut Pentaur was greeted by the princess's companions.

The chamberlain looked at him not without anxious misgiving.

The king, when he departed, had, it is true, given him orders to obey
Bent-Anat in every particular, as if she were the queen herself; but her
choice of such a husband was a thing unheard of, and how would the king
take it?

Nefert rejoiced in the splendid person of the poet, and frequently
repeated that he was as like her dead uncle--the father of Paaker, the
chief-pioneer--as if he were his younger brother.

Uarda never wearied of contemplating him and her beloved princess. She no
longer looked upon him as a being of a higher order; but the happiness of
the noble pair seemed to her an embodied omen of happiness for Nefert's
love--perhaps too for her own.

Nebsecht kept modestly in the background. The headache, from which he had
long been suffering, had disappeared in the fresh mountain air. When
Pentaur offered him his hand he exclaimed:

"Here is an end to all my jokes and abuse! A strange thing is this fate
of men. Henceforth I shall always have the worst of it in any dispute
with you, for all the discords of your life have been very prettily
resolved by the great master of harmony, to whom you pray."

"You speak almost as if you were sorry; but every thing will turn out
happily for you too."

"Hardly!" replied the surgeon, "for now I see it clearly. Every man is a
separate instrument, formed even before his birth, in an occult workshop,
of good or bad wood, skilfully or unskilfully made, of this shape or the
other; every thing in his life, no matter what we call it, plays upon
him, and the instrument sounds for good or evil, as it is well or ill
made. You are an AEolian harp--the sound is delightful, whatever breath
of fate may touch it; I am a weather-cock--I turn whicheve