“All can see that, Ana.  What else?”

“I think,” I said in a low voice so that none might overhear, “that his heart is as black as his brow; that he has grown wicked with jealousy and hate and will do you evil.”

“Can a man grow wicked, Ana?  Is he not as he was born till the end?  I do not know, nor do you.  Still you are right, he is jealous and will do me evil if it brings him good.  But tell me, which of us will triumph at the last?”

While I hesitated what to answer I became aware that someone had joined us.  Looking round I perceived a very ancient man clad in a white robe.  He was broad-faced and bald-headed, and his eyes burned beneath his shaggy eyebrows like two coals in ashes.  He supported himself on a staff of cedar-wood, gripping it with both hands that for thinness were like to those of a mummy.  For a while he considered us both as though he were reading our souls, then said in a full and jovial voice: 

“Greeting, Prince.”

Seti turned, looked at him, and answered: 

“Greeting, Bakenkhonsu.  How comes it that you are still alive?  When we parted at Thebes I made sure——­”

“That on your return you would find me in my tomb.  Not so, Prince, it is I who shall live to look upon you in your tomb, yes, and on others who are yet to sit in the seat of Pharaoh.  Why not?  Ho! ho!  Why not, seeing that I am but a hundred and seven, I who remember the first Rameses and have played with his grandson, your grandsire, as a boy?  Why should I not live, Prince, to nurse your grandson—­if the gods should grant you one who as yet have neither wife nor child?”

“Because you will get tired of life, Bakenkhonsu, as I am already, and the gods will not be able to spare you much longer.”

“The gods can endure yet a while without me, Prince, when so many are flocking to their table.  Indeed it is their desire that one good priest should be left in Egypt.  Ki the Magician told me so only this morning.  He had it straight from Heaven in a dream last night.”

“Why have you been to visit Ki?” asked Seti, looking at him sharply.  “I should have thought that being both of a trade you would have hated each other.”

“Not so, Prince.  On the contrary we add up each other’s account; I mean, check and interpret each other’s visions, with which we are both of us much troubled just now.  Is that young man a scribe from Memphis?”

“Yes, and my friend.  His grandsire was Pentaur the poet.”

“Indeed.  I knew Pentaur well.  Often has he read me to sleep with his long poems, rank stuff that grew like coarse grass upon a deep but half-drained soil.  Are you sure, young man, that Pentaur was your grandfather?  You are not like him.  Quite a different kind of herbage, and you know that it is a matter upon which we must take a woman’s word.”

Seti burst out laughing and I looked at the old priest angrily, though now that I came to think of it my father always said that his mother was one of the biggest liars in Egypt.