house," replied the other, "we shall think ourselves safe."--"I cannot receive you just at this time," said she, "for I must now perform some nocturnal sacrifices. But if you can endure it--and indeed you must do so, retire to some distance from the slain, and endeavour to pass the night as well as you can in the plain; in the morning I will gladly receive and entertain you as my guests." When she had said this, Calasiris took Chariclea, and shortly explained to her what had passed between them; and going to a rising ground, not very far from the field of battle, he there reclined himself, putting the quiver under his head. Chariclea sat down on her wallet--the moon just rising, and beginning to illuminate all around with her silver light; for it was the third day from the full. Calasiris, old, and fatigued with his journey, dropped asleep; but Chariclea's cares kept her waking, and made her spectatress of an impious and accursed scene, but not an unusual one, among the Egyptians. For[6] now the old woman, supposing herself at liberty, and unobserved, dug a sort of pit, and lighted a fire of sticks which she had collected together, on each side of it. Between the two fires she placed the dead body of her son, and taking an earthen cup from a neighbouring tripod, she poured first honey into the trench, then milk, and then wine. She next worked up a kind of paste of dough into something of the similitude of a man, and crowning it with laurel and fennel, cast that too into the ditch. Then snatching up a sword, with many frantic gestures and barbarous invocations to the moon, in an unknown tongue, she wounded herself in the arm, and dipping a branch of laurel in her blood, sprinkled it over the fire. And after many other wild and mystic ceremonies, she stooped down at length to the corpse of her son, whispered something in its ear, and, by the power of her spells, raised and forced it to stand upright. Chariclea, who had observed the former part of this ceremony, not without apprehension, was now seized with affright and horror, and awakened Calasiris, that he too might be a spectator of what was being done. They, being themselves shrouded in darkness, observed in security what passed by the light of the fires, and were near enough too to hear what was said; the old woman now questioning the dead body in a loud voice,--"Whether its brother, her son, would return in safety?"--it answered nothing; but nodding its head by a doubtful signal, gave its mother room to hope, and then, on a sudden, fell down again upon its face. She turned the body on its back, repeated her question, and whispered, as it should seem, still stronger charms in its ear; and brandishing her sword now over the fire, and now over the trench, raised the corpse again, and putting the same interrogation to it, urged it to answer her, not by nods and signs only, but in actual and distinct words.