sleeve of his coat. "Aye-a swelled foot like mine is painful, child, and
a cripple such as I am is not always strong-minded. Old women grow like
men, and old men grow like women. Ah! old age--it is bad to have such
feet as mine, but what is worse is that memory fades as years advance.
I believe now that I left the key myself in the door of the Apis-tombs
last evening, and I will send at once to Asclepiodorus, so that he may
beg the Egyptians up there to forgive me--they are indebted to me for
many small jobs."




CHAPTER XXIV.

All the black masses of clouds which during the night had darkened the
blue sky and hidden the light of the moon had now completely disappeared.
The north-east wind which rose towards morning had floated them away, and
Zeus, devourer of the clouds, had swallowed them up to the very last. It
was a glorious morning, and as the sun rose in the heavens, and pierced
and burnt up with augmenting haste the pale mist that hovered over the
Nile, and the vapor that hung--a delicate transparent veil of bluish-grey
bombyx-gauze--over the eastern slopes, the cool shades of night vanished
too from the dusky nooks of the narrow town which lay, mile-wide, along
the western bank of the river. And the intensely brilliant sunlight
which now bathed the streets and houses, the palaces and temples, the
gardens and avenues, and the innumerable vessels in the harbor of
Memphis, was associated with a glow of warmth which was welcome even
there in the early morning of a winter's day.

Boats' captains and sailors--were hurrying down to the shore of the Nile