"And who would be so foolish as to ask you to do either? But there are linen and posts to be had in Memphis. Have some large tents pitched in the Necropolis, and all who fall sick of the pestilence removed there at the expense of the city and tended under their shade. Appoint three or four of your number to carry this into execution and there will be a shelter for the roofless sick in a few hours. How many boatmen and shipwrights are standing idle on the quays! Call them together and in an hour they will be at work." This suggestion was approved. A linen-merchant present exclaimed: "I can supply what is needed," and another who dealt in the same wares, and exported this famous Egyptian manufacture to remote places, also put in a word, desiring that his house might have the order as he could sell cheaper. This squabble might have absorbed the attention of the meeting till it rose, and perhaps have been renewed the next day, if Horapollo's proposal that they should divide the commission equally had not been hastily adopted. The populace hailed the announcement that tents would be erected for the sick in the desert, with applause from a thousand voices. The deputies chosen to superintend the task set to work at once, and by night the most destitute were safe under the first large hospital tent. The old man settled some other important questions in the same way, always appealing to the lore of the ancients. At length he spoke of the chief subject, and he did so with great caution and tact. All the events of the last few weeks, he said, pointed to the conclusion that Heaven was wroth with the hapless land of their fathers. As a sign of their anger the Immortals had sent the comet, that terrible star whose ominous splendor was increasing daily. To make the Nile rise was not in the power of men; but the ancients--and here his audience listened with bated breath--the ancients had been more intimately familiar with the mysterious powers that rule the life of Nature than men in the later times, whether priests or laymen. In those days every servant of the Most High had been a naturalist and a student, and when Egypt had been visited by such a calamity as that of this year, a sacrifice had been offered--a precious victim against which all mankind, nay and all his own feelings revolted; still, this sacrifice had never failed of its effect, no, never. Here was the evidence--and he pointed to the manuscripts in his lap. The councillors had begun to be restless in their seats, and first the president and then the others, one after another, exclaimed and asked: "But the victim?" "What did they sacrifice?" "What about the victim?" "Allow me to say no more about it till another time," said the old man. "What good could it do to tell you that now? The first thing is to find the thing that is acceptable to the gods." "What is it?"