“It must have been a disappointment to the Doctor that his protege took up the Christian religion, instead of following the faith and observances of his Egyptian ancestors, for the last five thousand years!”

“Why, perhaps it was, Thor, perhaps it was,” murmured Mr. MacGentle.  “But Manetho never entered the pulpit, you know; it would not have been to his interest to do so; besides that, I believe he is really devoted to Glyphic, believing that it was he who saved him from the crocodile.  People are all the time making such absurd mistakes.  Manetho is a man who would be unalterable either in gratitude or enmity, although his external manner is so mild.  And as to his taking orders, why, as long as he wore an Egyptian robe, and said his prayers in an Egyptian temple, it would be all the same to Glyphic what religion the man professed!”

“Doctor Glyphic is still alive, then?”

The old man looked at the young one with an air half apprehensive, half perplexed, as if scenting the far approach of some undefined difficulty.  He passed his white hand over his forehead.  “Everything seems out of joint-to-day, Helwyse.  Nothing looks or seems natural, except you!  What is the matter with me?—­what is the matter with me?”

Helwyse sat with both hands twisted in his mighty beard, and one booted leg thrown over the other.  He was full of sympathy at the spectacle of poor Amos MacGentle, blindly groping after the phantom of a flower whose bloom and fragrance had vanished so terribly long ago; and yet, for some reason or other he could hardly forbear a smile.  When anything is utterly out of place, it is no more pathetic than absurd; moreover, young men are always secretly inclined to laugh at old ones!

“Why should not Glyphic be alive?” resumed Mr. MacGentle.  “Why not he, as well as you or I?  Aren’t we all about of an age?”

Helwyse drew his chair close to his companion’s, and took his hand, as if it had been a young girl’s.  “My dear friend,” said he, “you said you felt tired this morning, but you forget how far you’ve travelled since we last met.  Doctor Glyphic, if he be living now, must be more than sixty years old.  Your dream of old age was such as many have dreamed before, and not awakened from in this world!”

“Let me think!—­let me think!” said the old man; and, Helwyse drawing back, there ensued a silence, varied only by a long and tremulous sigh from his companion; whether of relief or dejection, the visitor could not decide.  But when Mr. MacGentle spoke, it was with more assurance.  Either from mortification at his illusion, or more probably from imperfect perception of it, he made no reference to what had passed.  Old age possesses a kind of composure, arising from dulled sensibilities, which the most self-possessed youth can never rival.

“We heard, through the London branch of our house, that Thor Helwyse died some two years ago.”

“He was drowned in the Baltic Sea.  I am his son Balder.”