daylight came through a small opening in the roof, over which the sun
stood perpendicularly, and a shaft of bright rays, in which danced the
whirling motes, shot down through the twilight on to the stone pavement.
Mummy-cases leaned against all the walls, and on smooth polished slabs
lay bodies covered with coarse cloths. A rat scudded now and then across
the floor, and from the wide cracks between the stones sluggish scorpions
crawled out.

The old paraschites was long since blunted to the horror which pervaded
this locality. He had spread a coarse napkin, and carefully laid on it
the provisions which his wife had put into his satchel; first half a cake
of bread, then a little salt, and finally a radish.

But the bag was not yet empty.

He put his hand in and found a piece of meat wrapped up in two cabbage-
leaves. Old Hekt had brought a leg of a gazelle from Thebes for Uarda,
and he now saw that the women had put a piece of it into his little sack
for his refreshment. He looked at the gift with emotion, but he did not
venture to touch it, for he felt as if in doing so he should be robbing
the sick girl. While eating the bread and the radish he contemplated the
piece of meat as if it were some costly jewel, and when a fly dared to
settle on it he drove it off indignantly.

At last he tasted the meat, and thought of many former noon-day meals,
and how he had often found a flower in the satchel, that Uarda had placed
there to please him, with the bread. His kind old eyes filled with
tears, and his whole heart swelled with gratitude and love. He looked
up, and his glance fell on the table, and he asked himself how he would
have felt if instead of the old priest, robbed of his heart, the sunshine