For many years men spoke of that never-to-be-forgotten sandstorm, a storm which ushered in days of blinding heat, days in which the flints that strewed the desert plateau cracked beneath the excoriating heat; days in which the ocher-hued river banks, confining a blinding reach of sluggish water, the shriveled and blasted sycamore, tamarisks and palms, nay, the very capital itself, seemed to be confined within the sun-god’s fiery furnace. Day in, day out, those death-dealing rays shot from a changeless vault of steely blue. Down sank the tortured cattle; the birds gasped among the shriveled leaves of the trees. The very soil, by now as hard as any southern granite, yawned with wide-thrown crevices many cubits deep. Far to the south the broad-winged vultures circled slowly earthward from their lofty posts, as if they too feared the darts of the outraged Amen. It was a sudden and appalling visitation which luckily blew itself out within but four of the customary nine days of blinding wind and sand. Yet, throughout those four memorable days and thereafter Renny worked as he had never worked before. Now, there came a day when Menna ordered his carrying-chair and bade his bearers set him down before the door of Renny’s workshop. At the Overseer’s repeated knocks the bolts were slowly drawn. Through the barely opened door Renny, blinded by the glare, gazed unseeingly toward the extended hand of his smiling patron: “How now, Syrian? Hast turned magician? Bar tells me thou must needs have conned the _hekau_-spell that bringeth food and drink, since all the food that is brought thee stands untasted. Breath of the Goddess! Why hast sulked behind barred doors these weeks and more?” Menna made as if to step within. “Ah, master, most noble lord, I do beseech thee, go not within! Bethink thee, Splendor of Thebes, when first I came to thee, thou didst assure to me that privacy which, far more than thy golden _uten_, I did ask of thee! Continue now thy favor some little time, I pray. Thy statue of the Goddess Hathor is...!” “Amemet eat me! Days, nay weeks, have we waited for a sight of it! Now is our sore-tried patience at an end.” With a firmness unexpected in the customarily indolent Menna, the Overseer pushed the trembling Renny aside and entered the workshop. At first, so sudden was the change from the glare of noonday to the murky shadows of the room, that Menna could distinguish nothing. When at last his eyes grew somewhat accustomed to the gloom, he found himself staring at the tinted statue of a regally robed woman, a life-sized figure so startlingly realistic that for a moment he instinctively drew back. Upon a pedestal festooned with drooping lotus and fragrant mimosa stood the smiling figure of the Princess Sesen. So lifelike did the statue appear to the bewildered noble, that for a space of a full minute, he waited, expecting her lips to part, her tongue to utter the customary greetings.