As the afternoon waned, Nur-Samas’s beer-house buzzed louder and louder, until a stranger might have deemed it one vast beehive. The jolly liquor and the bouncing serving-maids about Sadasu, the hostess, were twin lures that stole the stamped silver out of the pouches of the most wary. The room was large, cool, and dark. Stools were scattered about in little groups, every seat occupied with its toper. In the hands of each was a sizable earthen jug that was replenished by the girls as often as its holder snapped his fingers or clapped his hands. Everybody was talking at once, with little heed whether his neighbour was also talking or listening. All were trying to barter broad jests or roaring at them, though scarce a man or woman there but was too tipsy to tell a straight story or understand the point of what was told them. When Khatin, the executioner, went down the stairway to enjoy his afternoon tankard, he found Gudea, the lean “demon-ejector,” and Binit, his angular wife, who acted as hired wailer at funerals, both with their noses deep in their cups, and they only lifted them when Khatin drew his stool close by theirs, and began to tell of the mysterious attack that had been made on the king’s own person at the great feast. “A fearful atrocity!” the headsman was bewailing; “and the worst of it all is that no one has yet been laid by the heels and brought to me for it. Only two heads sheared to-day—wretched eunuchs who fell out with the queen-mother Tavat-Hasina. I grow sluggish for lack of work.” “Poor Khatin!” commiserated Binit. “Yet sympathize with Gudea; for two days he has not cast out a single ‘sickness-demon,’ and I have only wailed at one funeral, that of the rich old goat Isnil, who died of sheer age. The city grows impious and healthy. Men give up calling in an honest wizard when sick, and trust to roots and herbs and those horrible Egyptian doctors. The gods must grow dreadfully angry. The Jews still refuse to worship Bel and Nabu, despite the forced labour, and this makes heaven yet more furious. Alas! Such evil times!” Khatin raised his head, with a chuckle. “Now by all the host of heaven!” professed he, “I think the gods must get on excellently well, even if a few less shekels are wasted on such worthy servants as you, my dear Binit and Gudea. They _do_ say that even if the gods grow furious, when one really longs to be rid of a sickness, it is safer to trust the Egyptian doctors than the most noted wizard in all Babylon.” “Khatin,” admonished Gudea, rising in his dignity, “you call yourself my friend; understand that if you call down the wrath of the gods by your blasphemies, you need expect no help from me to avert their rage.”