“And yet, father,” Klea calmly replied, “I feel perfectly guiltless, and perhaps in the same fearful situation you might not have acted differently.”

“You think so—­you dare to believe such a thing?” stormed the old man.  “And if the key and perhaps even the lock have been stolen, and if I have done all that beautiful and elaborate work in vain?”

“What thief would venture into the sacred tombs?” asked Klea doubtfully.

“What! are they so unapproachable?” interrupted Krates.  “Why, a miserable creature like you even dared to open them.  But only wait—­only wait; if only my feet were not so painful—­”

“Listen to me,” said the girl, going closer up to the indignant smith.  “You are discreet, as you proved to me only yesterday; and if I were to tell you all I went through and endured last night you would certainly forgive me, that I know.”

“If you are not altogether mistaken!” shouted the smith.  “Those must be strange things indeed which could induce me to let such neglect of duty and such a misdemeanor pass unpunished.”

And strange things they were indeed which the old man now had to hear, for when Klea had ended her narrative of all that had occurred during the past night, not her eyes only but those of the old smith too were wet with tears.

“These accursed legs!” he muttered, as his eyes met the enquiring glance of the young girl, and he wiped the salt dew from his cheeks with the sleeve of his coat.  “Aye-a swelled foot like mine is painful, child, and a cripple such as I am is not always strong-minded.  Old women grow like men, and old men grow like women.  Ah! old age—­it is bad to have such feet as mine, but what is worse is that memory fades as years advance.  I believe now that I left the key myself in the door of the Apis-tombs last evening, and I will send at once to Asclepiodorus, so that he may beg the Egyptians up there to forgive me—­they are indebted to me for many small jobs.”

CHAPTER XXIV.

All the black masses of clouds which during the night had darkened the blue sky and hidden the light of the moon had now completely disappeared.  The north-east wind which rose towards morning had floated them away, and Zeus, devourer of the clouds, had swallowed them up to the very last.  It was a glorious morning, and as the sun rose in the heavens, and pierced and burnt up with augmenting haste the pale mist that hovered over the Nile, and the vapor that hung—­a delicate transparent veil of bluish-grey bombyx-gauze—­over the eastern slopes, the cool shades of night vanished too from the dusky nooks of the narrow town which lay, mile-wide, along the western bank of the river.  And the intensely brilliant sunlight which now bathed the streets and houses, the palaces and temples, the gardens and avenues, and the innumerable vessels in the harbor of Memphis, was associated with a glow of warmth which was welcome even there in the early morning of a winter’s day.