ds and the
beginning of the Upper World. I learnt of the mystery of the movements
of the stars, and of how the earth rolls on among them. I was instructed
in that ancient knowledge which is called magic, and in the way of
interpretation of dreams, and of the drawing nigh to God. I was taught
the language of symbols and their outer and inner secrets. I became
acquainted with the eternal laws of Good and Evil, and with the mystery
of that trust which is held of man; also I learnt the secrets of the
pyramids--which I would that I had never known. Further, I read the
records of the past, and of the acts and words of the ancient kings who
were before me since the rule of Horus upon earth; and I was made to
know all craft of state, the lore of earth, and with it the history of
Greece and Rome. Also I learnt the Grecian and Roman tongues, of which
indeed I already had some knowledge--and all this while, for five long
years, I kept my hands clean and my heart pure, and did no evil in the
sight of God or man; but laboured heavily to acquire all things, and to
prepare myself for the destiny that awaited me.

Twice every year greetings and letters came from my father Amenemhat,
and twice every year I sent back my answers asking if the time had come
to cease from labour. And so the days of my probation sped away till I
grew faint and weary at heart, for being now a man, ay and learned, I
longed to make a beginning of the life of men. And often I wondered if
this talk and prophecy of the things that were to be was but a dream
born of the brains of men whose wish ran before their thought. I was,
indeed, of the Royal blood, that I knew: for my uncle, Sepa the Priest,
showed me a secret record of the descent, traced without break from
father to son, and graven in mystic symbols on a tablet of the stone
of Syene. But of what avail was it to be Royal by right when Egypt, my
heritage, was a slave--a slave to do the pleasure and minister to the
luxury of the Macedonian Lagidae--ay, and when she had been so long a
serf that, perchance, she had forgotten how to put off the servile smile
of Bondage and once more to look across the world with Freedom's happy
eyes?

Then I bethought me of my prayer upon the pylon tower of Abouthis and of
the answer given to my prayer, and wondered if that, too, were a dream.

And one night, as, weary with study, I walked within the sacred grove
that is in the garden of the temple, and mused thus, I met my unc