ld make my way to the tomb
by the palm-trees. There, standing by the dead casket from which the
jewel had been rifled, I would feel her sweet presence, and would
whisper to her that I would rejoin her if mortal wit could solve the
riddle.

"Parmes had said that his discovery was connected with the ring of
Thoth. I had some remembrance of the trinket. It was a large and weighty
circlet, made, not of gold, but of a rarer and heavier metal brought
from the mines of Mount Harbal. Platinum, you call it. The ring had,
I remembered, a hollow crystal set in it, in which some few drops of
liquid might be stored. Now, the secret of Parmes could not have to do
with the metal alone, for there were many rings of that metal in the
Temple. Was it not more likely that he had stored his precious poison
within the cavity of the crystal? I had scarce come to this conclusion
before, in hunting through his papers, I came upon one which told me
that it was indeed so, and that there was still some of the liquid
unused.

"But how to find the ring? It was not upon him when he was stripped
for the embalmer. Of that I made sure. Neither was it among his private
effects. In vain I searched every room that he had entered, every box,
and vase, and chattel that he had owned. I sifted the very sand of the
desert in the places where he had been wont to walk; but, do what I
would, I could come upon no traces of the ring of Thoth. Yet it may be
that my labours would have overcome all obstacles had it not been for a
new and unlooked-for misfortune.

"A great war had been waged against the Hyksos, and the Captains of the
Great King had been cut off in the desert, with all their bowmen and
horsemen. The shepherd tribes were upon us like the locusts in a dry
year. From the wilderness of Shur to the great bitter lake there was
blood by day and fire by night. Abaris was the bulwark of Egypt, but
we could not keep the savages back. The city fell. The Governor and the
soldiers were put to the sword, and I, with many more, was led away into
captivity.

"For years and years I tended cattle in the great plains by the
Euphrates. My master died, and his son grew old, but I was still as far
from death as ever. At last I escaped upon a swift camel, and made my
way back to Egypt. The Hyksos had settled in the land which they had
conquered, and their own King ruled over the country Abaris had been
torn down, the city had been burned, and of the great Temple there wa