rees to a point or into an elliptical shape. With the help of a hoe
formed of two pieces of hard wood bound by a cord and thus making a
hook, other workmen were preparing the ground for planting.

It was a delightful sight to see these men with their black, woolly
hair, their bodies the colour of brick, dressed only in a pair of white
drawers, going and coming amid the greenery with orderly activity,
singing a rustic song to which their steps kept time. The birds perched
on the trees seemed to know them, and scarcely to fly off when, as they
passed, they rubbed against the branches.

The door of the building opened, and Poeri appeared on the threshold.
Though he was dressed in the Egyptian fashion, his features were not in
accordance with the national type, and it took no long observation to
see that he did not belong to the native race of the valley of the Nile.
He was assuredly not a _Rot'en'no_. His thin aquiline nose, his flat
cheeks, his serious-looking, closed lips, the perfect oval of his face,
were essentially different from the African nose, the projecting
cheek-bones, the thick lips, and broad face characteristic of the
Egyptians. Nor was his complexion the same; the copper tint was replaced
by an olive pallor, which the rich, pure blood flushed slightly; his
eyes, instead of showing black between their lines of antimony, were of
a dark blue like the sky of night; his hair, silkier and softer, curled
in less crisp undulations, and his shoulders did not exhibit that
rigid, transversal line which is the characteristic sign of the race as
represented on the statues of the temples and the frescoes of the tombs.

All these characteristics went to form a remarkable beauty, which
Petamounoph's daughter had been unable to resist. Since the day when
Poeri had by chance appeared to her, leaning upon the gallery of the
building--which was his favourite place when he was not busy with the
farm work--she had returned many times under pretext of driving, and had
made her chariot pass under the balcony of the villa; but although she
had put on her handsomest tunics, fastened around her neck her richest
necklaces and encircled her wrists with her most wondrously chased
bracelets, wreathed her hair with the freshest lotus-flowers, drawn to
the temples the black line of her eyes, and brightened her cheeks with
rouge, Poeri had never seemed to pay the smallest attention to her.

And yet Tahoser was rarely beautiful, and the lo