n their forehead and breast. Uarda
still lay, when the sun was sinking, in front of the hut.

She looked weary and pale. Her long hair had come undone, and once more
got entangled with the straw of her humble couch. If Nebsecht went near
her to feel her pulse or to speak to her she carefully turned her face
from him.

Nevertheless when the sun disappeared behind the rocks he bent over her
once more, and said:

"It is growing cool; shall I carry you indoors?"

"Let me alone," she said crossly. "I am hot, keep farther away. I am no
longer ill, and could go indoors by myself if I wished; but grandmother
will be here directly."

Nebsecht rose, and sat down on a hen-coop that was some paces from
Uarda, and asked stammering, "Shall I go farther off?"

"Do as you please," she answered. "You are not kind," he said sadly.

"You sit looking at me," said Uarda, "I cannot bear it; and I am
uneasy--for grandfather was quite different this morning from his usual
self, and talked strangely about dying, and about the great price that
was asked of him for curing me. Then he begged me never to forget him,
and was so excited and so strange. He is so long away; I wish he were
here, with me."

And with these words Uarda began to cry silently. A nameless anxiety for
the paraschites seized Nebsecht, and it struck him to the heart that he
had demanded a human life in return for the mere fulfilment of a
duty. He knew the law well enough, and knew that the old man would be
compelled without respite or delay to empty the cup of poison if he were
found guilty of the theft of a human heart.

It was dark: Uarda ceased weeping and said to the surgeon:

"Can it be possible that he has gone into the city to borrow the great
sum of money that thou--or thy temple--demanded for thy medicine? But
there is the princess's golden bracelet, and half of father's prize, and
in the chest two years' wages that grandmother had earned by wailing he
untouched. Is all that not enough?"

The girl's last question was full of resentment and reproach, and
Nebsecht, whose perfect sincerity was part of his very being, was
silent, as he would not venture to say yes. He had asked more in return
for his help than gold or silver. Now he remembered Pentaur's warning,
and when the jackals began to bark he took up the fire-stick,

[The hieroglyphic sign Sam seems to me to represent the wooden stick
used to produce fire (as among some savage tribes) by rapid fri