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But when he heard the story of Ki Ki's promised treason on the day of battle, when he heard that the weasel had betrayed the secret of the spring, which did not freeze in winter, he lifted up his claw and opened his eyes still wider in amazement and terror. "Wretched creature!" he said, "what is this you have been saying."
The tide lapped upon the timbers supporting the wharf and little whispers and gurgling sounds stole up from beneath our feet. Once there was a faint splash from somewhere below and behind us. "There goes a rat," said Fletcher vaguely, and without taking his gaze from the darkness under the distant shore. "It's gone into the cutting at the back of John Ki's."
Well, Ki, I cannot, because I neither do it nor know how it is done." Bakenkhonsu laughed, and Ki's painted smile grew as it were brighter than before. "That is not what they say in the land of Goshen, Lady," he answered, "and not what the Hebrew women say here in Memphis. Nor is it what the priests of Amon say. These declare that you have more magic than all the sorcerers of the Nile.
And then, O Prince, elsewhere the game will begin afresh, and what you have lost shall be found anew, and the sweeter for it sheltering from the vile breath of men. Ki's magic is not all a lie, or if his is, mine holds some shadow of the truth, and when he said to you yonder in Tanis that not for nothing were you named 'Lord of Rebirths, he spoke words that you should find comfortable to-night."
In this position I recited Yung Ki's stimulating address to his troops when in sight of an overwhelming foe, and, in spite of the continually back-thrust foot of the undiscriminating one before me, I successfully accomplished the seventy-five lines of the poem without a stumble.
But when I told of the darkness that had seemed to gather in the hall and of the gloom that filled the hearts of all men and of the awesome dream of Bakenkhonsu, also of the words of Ki after he had clouded my mind and played his jest upon me, he listened with much earnestness and answered: "My mind is as Ki's in this matter.
The Ki stooped their aged shoulders and shuffled along with their hands in their pockets, and only once did they speak, and that was to roar "Great Kika-koo!" when the Ki-Ki jabbed their canes down on the Ki's toes. Following the Ki-Ki and the Ki came the prince and Nerle, escorted by the twin captains, and then there were files of twin soldiers bringing up the rear.
Therefore to secure for him the most modern and progressive education, he sent the boy a hundred miles away to a school on the Great Canal, taught by American missionaries. "To get the Western learning," he told the boy, but not the foreign devils' religion. The teacher in Yuan Ki's room was a six-footer, a college graduate, and an athlete. Yuan Ki was much impressed.
"I am much pleased," said the king, who had been a little doubtful. "Tell your friends to continue in that spirit." "With all my heart," said Tchink, laughing in Ki Ki's face; he actually flew close by the terrible hawk, and made a face at him, for he knew that he was disappointed, having hoped for permission to tear and rend the finches as the larks. "The thrushes," began the owl again.
There was a long, strange-shaped, box-like thing, with some candles burning near by. Curiosity getting the better of him, Yuan Ki got up and crept across the hall. Coming close to the casket, he looked through the glass cover and there lay the teacher. Just then a hand was laid on Yuan Ki's shoulder, and the nurse hustled him back to bed, scolding him for his imprudence.
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