“As you will! In truth, if I had ever heard Beki’s singing, I should be bound to still greater gratitude to her than I now am to Hekt,” said Ani smiling. “Still, I cannot quit the wisest woman in Thebes without asking her one serious question. Is it given to you to read the future? Have you means at your command whereby you can see whether the great stake--you know which I mean--shall be won or lost?” Hekt looked at the ground, and said after reflecting a short time: “I cannot decide with certainty, but thy affair stands well. Look at these two hawks with the chain on their feet. They take their food from no one but me. The one that is moulting, with closed, grey eyelids, is Rameses; the smart, smooth one, with shining eyes, is thyself. It comes to this--which of you lives the longest. So far, thou hast the advantage.” Ani cast an evil glance at the king’s sick hawk; but Hekt said: “Both must be treated exactly alike. Fate will not be done violence to.” “Feed them well,” exclaimed the Regent; he threw a purse into Hekt’s lap, and added, as he prepared to leave her: “If anything happens to either of the birds let me know at once by Nemu.” Ani went down the hill, and walked towards the neighboring tomb of his father; but Hekt laughed as she looked after him, and muttered to herself: “Now the fool will take care of me for the sake of his bird! That smiling, spiritless, indolent-minded man would rule Egypt! Am I then so much wiser than other folks, or do none but fools come to consult Hekt? But Rameses chose Ani to represent him! perhaps because he thinks that those who are not particularly clever are not particularly dangerous. If that is what he thought, he was not wise, for no one usually is so self-confident and insolent as just such an idiot.” CHAPTER XXXIII. An hour later, Ani, in rich attire, left his father’s tomb, and drove his brilliant chariot past the witch’s cave, and the little cottage of Uarda’s father. Nemu squatted on the step, the dwarf’s usual place. The little man looked down at the lately rebuilt hut, and ground his teeth, when, through an opening in the hedge, he saw the white robe of a man, who was sitting by Uarda. The pretty child’s visitor was prince Rameri, who had crossed the Nile in the early morning, dressed as a young scribe of the treasury, to obtain news of Pentaur--and to stick a rose into Uarda’s hair. This purpose was, indeed, the more important of the two, for the other must, in point of time at any rate, be the second.