drive you and your following from their country?"

Now I thought and answered,

"Yes, one thing. I saw no women in their camp, nor any sign of
children. This I know because I gave orders that such were to be
spared and it was reported to me that there were none, so I supposed
that they had fled away."

"There were none to fly, Master. That tribe was a brotherhood which
had abjured women. Look on me now. I am misshapen, hideous, am I not?
Born thus, it is said, because before my birth my mother was
frightened by a dwarf. Yet the law of the Ethiopians is that their
kings must marry within a year of their crowning. Therefore I chose a
woman to be the queen whom I had long desired in secret. She scorned
me, vowing that not for all the thrones of all the world would she be
mated to a monster, and that if it were done by force she would kill
herself, a saying that went abroad throughout the land. I said that
she had spoken well and sent her in safety from the country, after
which I too laid down my crown and departed with some who loved me, to
form a brotherhood of women-haters further down the Nile, beyond the
borders of Ethiopia. There the Egyptian force of which you were in
command, attacked us unprepared, and you made me your slave. That is
all."

"But why did you do this, Bes, seeing that maidens are many and all
would not have thought thus?"

"Because I wished for that one only, Master; also I feared lest I
should become the father of a breed of twisted dwarfs. So I who was a