“The fairest memory of your life must surely be that of the sweet child whose face, as you once confessed to me, first opened your soul to the sense of beauty, and whom with your own hands you snatched from death at the cost of your own life.  You know Uarda has found her own relatives and is happy, and she is very grateful to her preserver, and would like to see him once more before she goes far away with her grandfather.”

The sick man hesitated before he answered softly: 

“Let her come—­but I will look at her from a distance.”

Pentaur went out and soon returned with Uarda, who remained standing with glowing cheeks and tears in her eyes at the door of the tent.  The leech looked at her a long time with an imploring and tender expression, then he said: 

“Accept my thanks—­and be happy.”

The girl would have gone up to him to take his hand, but he waved her off with his right hand enveloped in wrappings.

“Come no nearer,” he said, “but stay a moment longer.  You have tears in your eyes; are they for me or only for my pain?”

“For you, good noble man! my friend and my preserver!” said Uarda.  “For you dear, poor Nebsecht!” The leech closed his eyes as she spoke these words with earnest feeling, but he looked up once more as she ceased speaking, and gazed at her with tender admiration; then he said softly: 

“It is enough—­now I can die.”

Uarda left the tent, Pentaur remained with him listening to his hoarse and difficult breathing; suddenly: 

Nebsecht raised himself, and said:  “Farewell, my friend,—­my journey is beginning, who knows whither?”

“Only not into vacancy, not to end in nothingness!” cried Pentaur warmly.

The leech shook his head.  “I have been something,” he said, “and being something I cannot become nothing.  Nature is a good economist, and utilizes the smallest trifle; she will use me too according to her need.  She brings everything to its end and purpose in obedience to some rule and measure, and will so deal with me after I am dead; there is no waste.  Each thing results in being that which it is its function to become; our wish or will is not asked—­my head! when the pain is in my head I cannot think—­if only I could prove—­could prove——­”

The last words were less and less audible, his breath was choked, and in a few seconds Pentaur with deep regret closed his eyes.

Pentaur, as he quitted the tent where the dead man lay, met the high-priest Ameni, who had gone to seek him by his friend’s bed-side, and they returned together to gaze on the dead.  Ameni, with much emotion, put up a few earnest prayers for the salvation of his soul, and then requested Pentaur to follow him without delay to his tent.  On the way he prepared the poet, with the polite delicacy which was peculiar to him, for a meeting which might be more painful than joyful to him, and must in any case bring him many hours of anxiety and agitation.