had long been suffering, had disappeared in the fresh mountain air. When
Pentaur offered him his hand he exclaimed:

"Here is an end to all my jokes and abuse! A strange thing is this fate
of men. Henceforth I shall always have the worst of it in any dispute
with you, for all the discords of your life have been very prettily
resolved by the great master of harmony, to whom you pray."

"You speak almost as if you were sorry; but every thing will turn out
happily for you too."

"Hardly!" replied the surgeon, "for now I see it clearly. Every man is
a separate instrument, formed even before his birth, in an occult
workshop, of good or bad wood, skilfully or unskilfully made, of this
shape or the other; every thing in his life, no matter what we call it,
plays upon him, and the instrument sounds for good or evil, as it is
well or ill made. You are an AEolian harp--the sound is delightful,
whatever breath of fate may touch it; I am a weather-cock--I turn
whichever way the wind blows, and try to point right, but at the same
time I creak, so that it hurts my own ears and those of other people. I
am content if now and then a steersman may set his sails rightly by
my indication; though after all, it is all the same to me. I will turn
round and round, whether others look at me or no--What does it signify?"

When Pentaur and the princess took leave of the hunter with many gifts,
the sun was sinking, and the toothed peaks of Sinai glowed like rubies,
through which shone the glow of half a world on fire.

The journey to the royal camp was begun the next morning. Abocharabos,
the Amalekite chief, accompanied the caravan, to which Uarda's father
also attached himself; he had been taken prisoner in the struggle with
the natives, but at Bent-Anat's request was set at liberty.

At their first halting place he was commanded to explain how he had
succeeded in having Pentaur taken to the mines, instead of to the
quarries of Chennu.

"I knew," said the soldier in his homely way, "from Uarda where this
man, who had risked his life for us poor folks, was to be taken, and
I said to myself--I must save him. But thinking is not my trade, and
I never can lay a plot. It would very likely have come to some violent
act, that would have ended badly, if I had not had a hint from another
person, even before Uarda told me of what threatened Pentaur. This is
how it was.

"I was to convoy the prisoners, who were condemned to work in the Mafkat
mi