Like an endless caravan Hotep's mules trailed across the city day by day, and emptied their cargoes into the bottomless pits of the Gnomons. And Hotep's thousand cattle tramped his threshing-floors during the long winter, and until the later nightly snows signalled the coming of a tardy spring; and yet the patient mules streamed through the city, and wore deeper paths into the sides of the Gnomons, until one by one the great chambers were filled and sealed. Late in the spring the toiling cattle left the threshing-floors, and traversed the fields in long procession, two and two, lashed together by a bar across the horns instead of a yoke, and dragging heavy stone ploughs slowly after them to prepare the soil for a new planting. But while the whole left bank of the Nasr-Nil swarmed with Hotep's patient teams and their busy drivers, the right bank was deserted, idle, and lifeless. Every one wondered why the Pharaoh's planting was being delayed; no one knew why the Pharaoh's men and cattle were idle; and the old men shook their heads and muttered that the river would overflow its banks long before the Pharaoh's seed was in. After a while Zaphnath sent for me, and when I came before him he said,-- "The Pharaoh is sick with the plenty of the land, weary of the sight of grain-laden mules and ploughing cattle, and so cumbered about with mountains of wheat that he desireth not to plant his fields. Thou art not one to see his lands lie idle. If thou hast aught with which to tempt him, I can persuade him to let unto thee all his land and to hire unto thee all his men and mules and cattle. For hath he not acquired all his riches in seven years' harvests? and in another seven thou mayest be as rich as he." "Mayhap, O Zaphnath, the coming seven years may not be as plenteous as the last seven have been; but, in any case, I have no more gold with which to tempt the Pharaoh, having parted with all of it in a bad bargain with Hotep, whom thou knowest, for half of his coming crops." Thereupon he bade me remain, and sent for Hotep, and said to him,-- "Behold, have not the harvests of seven years made Pharaoh the richest man upon Ptah, so that he covets no more grain, but only things of rare beauty? And are not thy harvests reduced by half through thy compact with him from the Blue Star? Now, if thou likest to tempt the Pharaoh with an hundred of thy golden coins, and one-and-twenty of the moon-sized discs of gold such as thou wearest there, thou mayest hire his land for the next seven years, and all his men and animals for a like time, if thou wilt feed and nourish them; and then shall not both banks of the great river bring forth riches, and be burdened with the plenteous harvests of Hotep?" "Is the Pharaoh indeed weary of rich harvests, or doth he rather itch for my gold? Yet, had I the seed to plant all his fields, I might consider the undertaking thou shewest me."