There I sat--and the minutes seemed hours, till Assa came up; and when he stood before me, grown grey, it is true, but still handsome and upright--I put the gardener's boy, the six-toed brat, into his very arms, and a thousand demons seemed to laugh hoarsely within me.

He thanked me, he did not know me, and once more he offered me a handful of gold.

I took it, and I listened as the priest, who had come from the temple, prophesied all sorts of fine things for the little one, who was born in so fortunate an hour; and then I went back into my cave, and there I laughed till I cried, though I do not know that the tears sprang from the laughter.
"A few days after I gave Assa's grandchild to the gardener, and told him the sixth toe had come off; I had made a little wound on his foot to take in the bumpkin.

So Assa's grandchild, the son of the Mohar, grew up as the gardener's child, and received the name of Pentaur, and he was brought up in the temple here, and is wonderfully like Assa; but the gardener's monstrous brat is the pioneer Paaker.

That is the whole secret." Ani had listened in silence to the terrible old woman.
We are involuntarily committed to any one who can inform us of some absorbing fact, and who knows how to make the information valuable.