what they had done to you, and call on you, who are more powerful than
your poor servant, to revenge yourself. And besides, I wanted to see the
black box safe in your hands, lest they should take that from me too.
And so, old man as I am, with a sad heart I left my home and my
grandchildren to go forth into this foreign Typhon's land. Ah, the
little lad was too sharp! As I was kissing him, he said: 'Stay with us,
grandfather. If the foreigners make you unclean, they won't let me kiss
you any more.' Baner sends you a hearty greeting, and my son-in-law told
me to say he had found out that Psamtik, the crown-prince, and your
rival, Petammon, had been the sole causes of this execrable deed. I
could not make up my mind to trust myself on that Typhon's sea, so I
travelled with an Arabian trading caravan as far as Tadmor,--[Palmyra]--
the Phoenician palm-tree station in the wilderness," and then on to
Carchemish, on the Euphrates, with merchants from Sidon. The roads from
Sardis and from Phoenicia meet there, and, as I was sitting very weary in
the little wood before the station, a traveller arrived with the royal
post-horses, and I saw at once that it was the former commander of the
Greek mercenaries."

"And I," interrupted Phanes, "recognized just as soon in you, the longest
and most quarrelsome old fellow that had ever come across my path. Oh,
how often I've laughed to see you scolding the children, as they ran
after you in the street whenever you appeared behind your master with the
medicine-chest. The minute I saw you too I remembered a joke which the
king once made in his own way, as you were both passing by. 'The old
man,' he said, reminds me of a fierce old owl followed by a flight of
small teazing birds, and Nebenchari looks as if he had a scolding wife,
who will some day or other reward him for healing other people's eyes by
scratching out his own!'"