begged him to make every effort to find out what had become of the papers.  The good fellow has never forgotten the handsome dowry you gave my Baner when he married her, and in three days he came and told me he had seen your beautiful chest and all the rolls it contained burnt to ashes.  I was so angry that I fell ill of the jaundice, but that did not hinder me from sending in a written accusation to the magistrates.  The wretches,—­I suppose only because they were priests too,—­refused to take any notice of me or my complaint.  Then I sent in a petition to the king, and was turned away there too with the shameful threat, that I should be considered guilty of high treason if I mentioned the papers again.  I valued my tongue too much to take any further steps, but the ground burnt under my feet; I could not stay in Egypt, I wanted to see you, tell you what they had done to you, and call on you, who are more powerful than your poor servant, to revenge yourself.  And besides, I wanted to see the black box safe in your hands, lest they should take that from me too.  And so, old man as I am, with a sad heart I left my home and my grandchildren to go forth into this foreign Typhon’s land.  Ah, the little lad was too sharp!  As I was kissing him, he said:  ’Stay with us, grandfather.  If the foreigners make you unclean, they won’t let me kiss you any more.’  Baner sends you a hearty greeting, and my son-in-law told me to say he had found out that Psamtik, the crown-prince, and your rival, Petammon, had been the sole causes of this execrable deed.  I could not make up my mind to trust myself on that Typhon’s sea, so I travelled with an Arabian trading caravan as far as Tadmor,—­[Palmyra]—­the Phoenician palm-tree station in the wilderness,” and then on to Carchemish, on the Euphrates, with merchants from Sidon.  The roads from Sardis and from Phoenicia meet there, and, as I was sitting very weary in the little wood before the station, a traveller arrived with the royal post-horses, and I saw at once that it was the former commander of the Greek mercenaries.”

“And I,” interrupted Phanes, “recognized just as soon in you, the longest and most quarrelsome old fellow that had ever come across my path.  Oh, how often I’ve laughed to see you scolding the children, as they ran after you in the street whenever you appeared behind your master with the medicine-chest.  The minute I saw you too I remembered a joke which the king once made in his own way, as you were both passing by.  ’The old man,’ he said, reminds me of a fierce old owl followed by a flight of small teasing birds, and Nebenchari looks as if he had a scolding wife, who will some day or other reward him for healing other people’s eyes by scratching out his own!’”

“Shameful!” said the old man, and burst into a flood of execrations.