to the sandstone quarries of Chennu.

That Uarda's father had effected this change was beyond a doubt, and the
poet trusted the rough but honest soldier who still kept near him, and
gave him credit for the best intentions, although he had only spoken to
him once since their departure from Thebes.

That was the first night, when he had come up to Pentaur, and whispered:
"I am looking after you. You will find the physician Nebsecht here; but
treat each other as enemies rather than as friends, if you do not wish
to be parted."

Pentaur had communicated the soldier's advice to Nebsecht, and he had
followed it in his own way.

It afforded him a secret pleasure to see how Pentaur's life contradicted
the belief in a just and beneficent ordering of the destinies of men;
and the more he and the poet were oppressed, the more bitter was the
irony, often amounting to extravagance, with which the mocking sceptic
attacked him.

He loved Pentaur, for the poet had in his keeping the key which alone
could give admission to the beautiful world which lay locked up in his
own soul; but yet it was easy to him, if he thought they were observed,
to play his part, and to overwhelm Pentaur with words which, to the
drivers, were devoid of meaning, and which made them laugh by the
strange blundering fashion in which he stammered them out.

"A belabored husk of the divine self-consciousness." "An advocate of
righteousness hit on the mouth." "A juggler who makes as much of this
worst of all possible worlds as if it were the best." "An admirer of the
lovely color of his blue bruises." These and other terms of invective,
intelligible only to himself and his butt, he could always pour out in
new combinations, exciting Pentaur to sharp and often witty rejoinders,
equally unintelligible to the uninitiated.

Frequently their sparring took the form of a serious discussion, which
served a double purpose; first their minds, accustomed to serious
thought, found exercise in spite of the murderous pressure of the burden
of forced labor, and secondly, they were supposed really to be enemies.
They slept in the same court-yard, and contrived, now and then, to
exchange a few words in secret; but by day Nebsecht worked in the
turquoise-diggings, and Pentaur in the mines, for the careful chipping
out of the precious stones from their stony matrix was the work best
suited to the slight physician, while Pentaur's giant-strength was
fitted for hewing the ore o