Then the curtain fell in front of the throne and chamberlains came forward to lead me and Bes back to our lodging, one of whom took the cup and bore it in front of us.  Down the hall we went between the feasting nobles who all bowed to one to whom the Great King had shown favour, and so out of the palace through the quiet night back to the house where I had dwelt while waiting audience of the King.  Here the chamberlains bade me farewell, giving the cup to Bes to carry, and saying that on the morrow early my gold should be brought to me together with all that was needed for my journey, also one who would receive the bow I had promised to the King, which had already been returned to my lodgings with everything that was ours.  Then they bowed and went.

We entered the house, climbing a stair to an upper chamber.  Here Bes barred the door and the shutters, making sure that none could see or hear us.

Then he turned, threw his arms about me, kissed my hand and burst into tears.

CHAPTER VII

BES STEALS THE SIGNET

“Oh! my Master,” gulped Bes, “I weep because I am tired, so take no notice.  The day was long and during it twice at least there has been but the twinkling of an eyelid, but the thickness of a finger nail, but the weight of a hair between you and death.”

“Yes,” I said, “and you were the eyelid, the finger nail and the hair.”

“No, Master, not I, but something beyond me.  The tool carves the statue and the hand holds the tool but the spirit guides the hand.  Not once only since the sun rose has my mind been empty as a drum.  Then something struck on it, perhaps the holy Tanofir, perhaps another, and it knew what note to sound.  So it was when I cursed you in the boat.  So it was when I walked back with the eunuch, meaning to kill him on the road, and then remembered that the death of one vile eunuch would not help you at all, whereas alive he could bring me to the presence of the King, if I paid him, as I did out of the gold in your purse which I carried.  Moreover he earned his hire, for when the King grew dull, wine not yet having taken a hold on him, it was he who brought me to his mind as one who might amuse him, being so ugly and different from others, if only for a few minutes, after the women dancers had failed to do so.”

“And what happened then, Bes?”

“Then I was fetched and did my juggling tricks with that snake I caught and tamed, which is in my pouch now.  You should not hate it any more, Master, for it played your game well.  After this the King began to talk to me and I saw that his mind was ill at ease about you whom he knew that he had wronged.  So I told him that story of an elephant that my father killed to save a king—­it grew up in my mind like a toadstool in the night, Master, did this story of an ungrateful king and what befell him.  Then the King became still more unquiet in his heart about