The prince left, but this time a longer interval was necessary, before
the king could regain even outward cheerfulness sufficient to enable him
to appear before his guests.

Psamtik went at once to the commander of the native troops, ordered him
to banish the Egyptian captain who had failed in executing his revengeful
plans, to the quarries of Thebais, and to send the Ethiopians back to
their native country. He then hurried to the high-priest of Neith, to
inform him how much he had been able to extort from the king,

Neithotep shook his head doubtfully on hearing of Amasis' threats, and
dismissed the prince with a few words of exhortation, a practice he never
omitted.

Psamtik returned home, his heart oppressed and his mind clouded with a
sense of unsatisfied revenge, of a new and unhappy rupture with his
father, a fear of foreign derision, a feeling of his subjection to the
will of the priests, and of a gloomy fate which had hung over his head
since his birth.

His once beautiful wife was dead; and, of five blooming children, only
one daughter remained to him, and a little son, whom he loved tenderly,
and to whom in this sad moment he felt drawn. For the blue eyes and
laughing mouth of his child were the only objects that ever thawed this
man's icy heart, and from these he now hoped for consolation and courage
on his weary road through life.

"Where is my son?" he asked of the first attendant who crossed his path.

"The king has just sent for the Prince Necho and his nurse," answered the