The subject of a successor to the Horus Throne was one of great importance at this moment. Queen Noferith had borne the king but girls—“five little beams of Shu the sun-god” their royal father had playfully called them. And of these one had recently become the perfume of the heavenly lotus which the sun-god holds to his august face! Pharaoh felt sure that Ramses himself knew nothing of these rumors. In many a bitter discussion with his mother and Menna the Overseer Pharaoh had frequently stated his conviction that Ramses would utterly condemn such traitorous thoughts should they ever come to his ears. Pharaoh had loved Ramses like a brother. He had admired him as some superior being. For a time neither Menna’s craftily embellished reports nor Thi’s openly avowed hatred of Enana’s grandson could turn Pharaoh from his blind trust in the good faith of his boyhood’s hero. Himself ever a sickly child, Pharaoh had sighed for his coming of age, that he might take the field with Ramses, and be himself a witness of the latter’s many deeds of valor. For years had Pharaoh pictured himself in the famous Warbonnet of the Pharaohs, that bright blue headdress which Thothmes and a long line of heroic forebears had carried far into the ranks of their stricken foes and, with one exception, returned in safety to their acclaiming people. Yes, even King Sequenen’s horrible death, at the hands of the Hyksos invaders, was better far than his present life of inaction, a life varied only by tiresome harem plots, counterplots and the probabilities of a general religious or civil upheaval. But Pharaoh, under Thi’s baleful influence, was as pliable as the clay in the deft fingers of the potter. The Queen-Mother presently took fright at these oft-repeated and ever highly-colored rumors, and it was not long before she and Menna had convinced Pharaoh that the grandson of Enana, at Thebes, was a constant menace. Thus, when “the rewards of the King” were yet warm in Ramses’ hands, that happy young warrior was dismayed to receive a roll of papyrus, straight from the hands of Majesty, a brief note whose finely written contents necessitated another exile from Sesen, from Thebes and the home he so dearly loved, the villa of Enana the Magician, his grandsire. Ramses was commanded to depart for the north with the setting of the morrow’s sun, there to take over the Egyptian army guarding the hostile frontier in Asia. Bitter disappointment, and somewhat of anger, caused the voice of Ramses to tremble as he directed his chairmen to set him down at Enana’s villa. The home of Ramses’ grandsire was built upon a circular island on the western side of the Nile. Seen from a distance, this island appeared to float upon the quiet waters. The low white walls which surrounded its garden, its branching cedars, full crested palms and feathery mimosa trees, were mirrored in the waters of the inundation.