ak to you too before the battle. I can read your soul
through your eyes, and it seems to me that things have gone wrong with
you since the keeper of your stud arrived here. What has happened in
Thebes?" Mena looked frankly, but sadly at the king:

"My mother-in-law Katuti," he said, "is managing my estate very badly,
pledging the land, and selling the cattle."

"That can be remedied," said Rameses kindly. "You know I promised to
grant you the fulfilment of a wish, if Nefert trusted you as perfectly as
you believe. But it appears to me as if something more nearly concerning
you than this were wrong, for I never knew you anxious about money and
lands. Speak openly! you know I am your father, and the heart and the eye
of the man who guides my horses in battle, must be open without reserve
to my gaze."

Mena kissed the king's robe; then he said:

"Nefert has left Katuti's house, and as thou knowest has followed thy
daughter, Bent-Anat, to the sacred mountain, and to Megiddo."

"I thought the change was a good one," replied Rameses. "I leave
Bent-Anat in the care of Bent-Anat, for she needs no other guardianship,
and your wife can have no better protector than Bent-Anat."

"Certainly not!" exclaimed Mena with sincere emphasis. "But before they
started, miserable things occurred. Thou knowest that before she married
me she was betrothed to her cousin, the pioneer Paaker, and he, during
his stay in Thebes, has gone in and out of my house, has helped Katuti
with an enormous sum to pay the debts of my wild brother-in-law, and-as
my stud-keeper saw with his own eyes-has made presents of flowers to
Nefert."

The king smiled, laid his hand on Mena's shoulder, and said, as he looked
in his face: "Your wife will trust you, although you take a strange woman
into your tent, and you allow yourself to doubt her because her cousin
gives her some flowers! Is that wise or just? I believe you are jealous
of the broad-shouldered ruffian that some spiteful Wight laid in the nest
of the noble Mohar, his father."

"No, that I am not," replied Mena, "nor does any doubt of Nefert disturb
my soul; but it torments me, it nettles me, it disgusts me, that Paaker
of all men, whom I loathe as a venomous spider, should look at her and
make her presents under my very roof."

"He who looks for faith must give faith," said the king. "And must not I
myself submit to accept songs of praise from the most contemptible
wretches? Come--smooth your brow;