opened and fastened back with wooden pins while the heart continued to
beat.

He took no further notice of Pentaur, who for some time silently watched
the investigator; then he laid his hand on his shoulder and said:

"Lock your door more carefully, when you are busy with forbidden things."

"They took--they took away the bar of the door lately," stammered the
naturalist, "when they caught me dissecting the hand of the forger
Ptahmes."--[The law sentenced forgers to lose a hand.]

"The mummy of the poor man will find its right hand wanting," answered
the poet.

"He will not want it out there."

"Did you bury the least bit of an image in his grave?"

[Small statuettes, placed in graves to help the dead in the work
performed in the under-world. They have axes and ploughs in their
hands, and seed-bags on their backs. The sixth chapter of the Book
of the Dead is inscribed on nearly all.]

"Nonsense."

"You go very far, Nebsecht, and are not foreseeing, 'He who needlessly
hurts an innocent animal shall be served in the same way by the spirits
of the netherworld,' says the law; but I see what you will say. You hold
it lawful to put a beast to pain, when you can thereby increase that