exported this famous Egyptian manufacture to remote places, also put in a
word, desiring that his house might have the order as he could sell
cheaper. This squabble might have absorbed the attention of the meeting
till it rose, and perhaps have been renewed the next day, if Horapollo's
proposal that they should divide the commission equally had not been
hastily adopted.

The populace hailed the announcement that tents would be erected for the
sick in the desert, with applause from a thousand voices. The deputies
chosen to superintend the task set to work at once, and by night the most
destitute were safe under the first large hospital tent.

The old man settled some other important questions in the same way,
always appealing to the lore of the ancients.

At length he spoke of the chief subject, and he did so with great caution
and tact.

All the events of the last few weeks, he said, pointed to the conclusion
that Heaven was wroth with the hapless land of their fathers. As a sign
of their anger the Immortals had sent the comet, that terrible star whose
ominous splendor was increasing daily. To make the Nile rise was not in
the power of men; but the ancients--and here his audience listened with
bated breath--the ancients had been more intimately familiar with the
mysterious powers that rule the life of Nature than men in the later
times, whether priests or laymen. In those days every servant of the
Most High had been a naturalist and a student, and when Egypt had been
visited by such a calamity as that of this year, a sacrifice had been
offered--a precious victim against which all mankind, nay and all his own
feelings revolted; still, this sacrifice had never failed of its effect,