n, who lay there in convulsions, was
his daughter-in-law Setchem. The baby, a boy, was as sound as a nut,
but she was evidently in great danger. I sent the maid with the litter,
which was waiting outside, to the temple here for help; the girl said
that her master, the father of the child, was at the war, but that the
grandfather, the noble Assa, had promised to meet the lady Setchem at
the tomb, and would shortly be coming; then she disappeared with the
litter. I washed the child, and kissed it as if it were my own. Then I
heard distant steps in the valley, and the recollection of the moment
when I, lying at the point of death, had received that gift of money
from Assa came over me, and then I do not know myself how it happened--I
gave the new-born grandchild of Assa to my slave-girl, and told her to
carry it quickly to the cave, and I wrapped the little six-toed baby
in my rags and held it in my lap. There I sat--and the minutes seemed
hours, till Assa came up; and when he stood before me, grown grey, it
is true, but still handsome and upright--I put the gardener's boy, the
six-toed brat, into his very arms, and a thousand demons seemed to laugh
hoarsely within me. He thanked me, he did not know me, and once more he
offered me a handful of gold. I took it, and I listened as the priest,
who had come from the temple, prophesied all sorts of fine things for
the little one, who was born in so fortunate an hour; and then I went
back into my cave, and there I laughed till I cried, though I do not
know that the tears sprang from the laughter.

"A few days after I gave Assa's grandchild to the gardener, and told
him the sixth toe had come off; I had made a little wound on his foot to
take in the bumpkin. So Assa's grandchild, the son of the Mohar, grew
up as the gardener's child, and received the name of Pentaur, and he
was brought up in the temple here, and is wonderfully like Assa; but
the gardener's monstrous brat is the pioneer Paaker. That is the whole
secret."

Ani had listened in silence to the terrible old woman.

We are involuntarily committed to any one who can inform us of some
absorbing fact, and who knows how to make the information valuable.
It did not occur to the Regent to punish the witch for her crimes; he
thought rather of his older friends' rapture when they talked of the
singer Beki's songs and beauty. He looked at the woman, and a cold
shiver ran through all his limbs.

"You may live in peace," he sai