"She grew healthier and stronger and more and more beautiful, so
beautiful that I kept her hidden, and was consumed by the longing to make
her my wife. A good housewife she never became, to be sure; her hands
were so tender, and she did not even know how to milk the goat. My
mother did that and everything else for her.

"In the daytime she stayed in her hut and worked, for she was very
skillful at woman's work, and wove lace as fine as cobwebs, which my
mother sold that she might bring home perfumes with the proceeds. She
was very fond of them, and of flowers too; and Uarda in there takes after
her.

"In the evening, when the folk from the other side had left the City of
the Dead, she would often walk down the valley here, thoughtful and often
looking up at the moon, which she was especially fond of.

"One evening in the winter-time I came home. It was already dark, and I
expected to find her in front of the door. All at once, about a hundred
steps behind old Hekt's cave, I heard a troop of jackals barking so
furiously that I said to myself directly they had attacked a human being,
and I knew too who it was, though no one had told me, and the woman could
not call or cry out. Frantic with terror, I tore a firebrand from the
hearth and the stake to which the goat was fastened out of the ground,
rushed to her help, drove away the beasts, and carried her back senseless
to the hut. My mother helped me, and we called her back to life. When
we were alone, I wept like a child for joy at her escape, and she let me
kiss her, and then she became my wife, three years after I had bought
her.