ese words were a confirmation of what they
had been trying to hide from her: she was to lose her dear father soon.

After she had made this dreadful certainty clear to her own mind, and
discovered that it was in vain to beg her attendants to carry her to her
dying father, she left off listening to the courtiers below, and began
looking at the sistrum which Bartja himself had put into her hand, and
which she had brought on to the balcony with her, as if seeking comfort
there. And she found what she sought; for it seemed to her as if the
sound of its sacred rings bore her away into a smiling, sunny landscape.

That faintness which so often comes over people in decline, had seized
her and was sweetening her last hours with pleasant dreams.

The female slaves, who stood round to fan away the flies, said
afterwards that Tachot had never looked so lovely.

She had lain about an hour in this state, when her breathing became
more difficult, a slight cough made her breast heave, and the bright red
blood trickled down from her lips on to her white robe. She awoke, and
looked surprised and disappointed on seeing the faces round her. The
sight of her mother, however, who came on to the veranda at that moment,
brought a smile to her face, and she said, "O mother, I have had such a
beautiful dream."

"Then our visit to the temple has done my dear child good?" asked the
queen, trembling at the sight of the blood on the sick girl's lips.

"Oh, yes, mother, so much! for I saw him again." Ladice's glance at
the attendants seemed to ask "Has your poor mistress lost her senses?"
Tachot understood the look and said, evidently speaking with great
difficulty: "You think I am wandering, mother. No, indeed, I really
saw and spoke to him. He gave me my sistrum again, and said he was
my friend, and then he took my lotus-bud and vanished. Don't look so
distressed and surprised, mother. What I say is really true; it is no
dream.--There, you hear, Tentrut saw him too. He must have come to Sais
for my sake, and so the child-oracle in the temple-court did not deceive
me, after all. And now I don't feel anything more of my illness; I
dreamt I was lying in a field of blooming poppies, as red as the blood
of the young lambs that are offered in sacrifice; Bartja was sitting
by my side, and Nitetis was kneeling close to us and playing wonderful
songs on a Nabla made of ivory. And there was such a lovely sound in the
air that I felt as if Horus, the be