Rameses are closely connected--I will sacrifice them
both."

CHAPTER XXIX.

At last the pioneer's boat got off with his mother and the body of the
dog, which he intended to send to be embalmed at Kynopolis, the city in
which the dog was held sacred above all animals;

[Kynopolis, or in old Egyptian Saka, is now Samalut; Anubis was the
chief divinity worshipped there. Plutarch relates a quarrel between
the inhabitants of this city, and the neighboring one of Oxyrynchos,
where the fish called Oxyrynchos was worshipped. It began because
the Kynopolitans eat the fish, and in revenge the Oxyrynchites
caught and killed dogs, and consumed them in sacrifices. Juvenal
relates a similar story of the Ombites--perhaps Koptites--and
Pentyrites in the 15th Satire.]

Paaker himself returned to the House of Seti, where, in the night which
closed the feast day, there was always a grand banquet for the superior
priests of the Necropolis and of the temples of eastern Thebes, for the
representatives of other foundations, and for select dignitaries of the
state.

His father had never failed to attend this entertainment when he was
in Thebes, but he himself had to-day for the first time received the
much-coveted honor of an invitation, which--Ameni told him when he gave
it--he entirely owed to the Regent.

His mother had tied up his hand, which Rameri had severely hurt; it was
extremely painful, but he would not have missed the banquet at any cost,
although he felt some alarm of the solemn ceremony. His family was as
old as any in Egypt, his blood purer than the king's, and nevertheless
he never felt thoroughly at home in the company of superior people. He
was no priest, although a scribe; he was a warrior, and yet he did not
rank with royal heroes.

He had been brought up to a strict fulfilment of his duty, and he
devoted himself zealously to his calling; but his habits of life were
widely different from those of the society in which he had been brought
up--a society of which his handsome, brave, and magnanimous father had
been a chief ornament. He did not cling covetously to his inherited
wealth, and the noble attribute of liberality was not strange to him,
but the coarseness of his nature showed itself most when he was most
lavish, for he was never tired of exacting gratitude from those whom he
had attached to him by his gifts, and he thought he had earned the right
by his liberality to meet the rec