"But I am fainting," said Nefert, and began again to cry gently.

Paaker shrugged his shoulders, and went farther into the valley, which he
knew as well as his father's house; for in it was the tomb of his
mother's ancestors, in which, as a boy, he had put up prayers at every
full and new moon, and laid gifts on the altar.

The hut of the paraschites was prohibited to him, but he knew that
scarcely a hundred paces from the spot where Nefert was sitting, lived an
old woman of evil repute, in whose hole in the rock he could not fail to
find a drink of water.

He hastened forward, half intoxicated with had seen and felt within the
last few minutes.

The door, which at night closed the cave against the intrusions of the
plunder-seeking jackals, was wide open, and the old woman sat outside
under a ragged piece of brown sail-cloth, fastened at one end to the rock
and at the other to two posts of rough wood. She was sorting a heap of
dark and light-colored roots, which lay in her lap. Near her was a
wheel, which turned in a high wooden fork. A wryneck made fast to it by
a little chain, and by springing from spoke to spoke kept it in continual
motion.--[From Theocritus' idyl: The Sorceress.]--A large black cat
crouched beside her, and smelt at some ravens' and owls' heads, from
which the eyes had not long since been extracted.

Two sparrow-hawks sat huddled up over the door of the cave, out of which
came the sharp odor of burning juniper-berries; this was intended to
render the various emanations rising from the different strange
substances, which were collected and preserved there, innocuous.