for he hates him too, and he will serve thee more effectually than I can
with my vain spells and silly harmless brews. Now let me go home!"

A few hours later Ameni sent to invite the Regent to breakfast.

"Do you know who the witch Hekt is?" asked Ani.

"Certainly--how should I not know? She is the singer Beki--the former
enchantress of Thebes. May I ask what her communications were?"

Ani thought it best not to confide the secret of Pentaur's birth to the
high-priest, and answered evasively. Then Ameni begged to be allowed
to give him some information about the old woman, and how she had had a
hand in the game; and he related to his hearer, with some omissions and
variations--as if it were a fact he had long known--the very story which
a few hours since he had overheard, and learned for the first time. Ani
feigned great astonishment, and agreed with the high-priest that Paaker
should not for the present be informed of his true origin.

"He is a strangely constituted man," said Ameni, "and he is not
incapable of playing us some unforeseen trick before he has done his
part, if he is told who he is."

The storm had exhausted itself, and the sky, though covered still with
torn and flying clouds, cleared by degrees, as the morning went on; a
sharp coolness succeeded the hot blast, but the sun as it mounted higher
and higher soon heated the air. On the roads and in the gardens lay
uprooted trees and many slightly-built houses which had been blown
down, while the tents in the strangers' quarter, and hundreds of light
palm-thatched roofs, had been swept away.

The Regent was returning to Thebes, and with him went Ameni, who desired
to ascertain by his own eyes what mischief the whirlwind had done to his
garden in the city. On the Nile they met Paaker's boat, and Ani caused
it and his own to be stopped, while he requested Paaker to visit him
shortly at the palace.

The high-priest's garden was in no respect inferior in beauty and extent
to that of the Mohar. The ground had belonged to his family from the
remotest generations, and his house was large and magnificent. He seated
himself in a shady arbor, to take a repast with his still handsome wife
and his young and pretty daughters.

He consoled his wife for the various damage done by the hurricane,
promised the girls to build a new and handsomer clove-cot in the place
of the one which had been blown down, and laughed and joked with them
all; for here the severe head