"Yea," cried Theckla, "thou must surely come! For I will tell my mother that I have met the high-priest of Ombos, and she will long much to see thee."
Then Am-nem-hat, as if overpowered by their persuasions, replied: "Ye are both so kind to an old and lonely man that I can not resist your entreaties, and will even do as ye desire; for ye know not what pleasure the old may derive from the polite and hearty attentions of the young."
Then the two young people bade the old man a kind farewell, and, with the light heart of youth and health, took their way homeward down the mountain. And when they had come to the edge of the pasture-land they met with some of the cattle, and among them was the young bull-calf whose peculiar markings had so excited the wonder and superstition of Theckla; and Arius cried out laughingly: "Lo, Theckla! there is thy god, and thou shalt ride home upon the back of the beast."
And he cut a long withe and fastened it upon the horns of the bull, and led up the gentle beast, and, seizing the young girl in his arms, he lifted her astride of the fat, round calf, and led him along. And, when Arius mocked and ridiculed the young Apis, the girl joined in his merriment, and he was glad to see that she was fast losing all superstitious reverence for the brute, and for all the other pagan deities; for her growing contempt for Apis necessarily struck at her reverence for the whole system, of which a bull with a black hide, a triangular white spot on his forehead, a spread-eagle in the hairs of his back, a crescent white spot upon his side, and a knob like a scarabæus under his tongue, was so important a part.
When they had reached that part of the pasture which was nearest to the house, Theckla sprang from the animal's back, and, with some lingering doubt of his divinity still troubling her mind, she said: "Arius, I really wonder whether the Apis hath a knob under his tongue in the shape of a scarabæus? Wilt thou not look into his mouth?"
"I know not that," said the boy; "but, if he hath not a rather odd-looking spot under his tongue, he is the only bull-calf I ever saw that hath it not; and I suppose it would be easy to irritate and inflame this spot until it would look like a natural knob about as large as a good, lively beetle."
"I had never thought it might be possible for the priests to so deceive any one," said Theckla.
"Perhaps they did not do so," answered the boy; "but they may have been deceived by the cunning of those who had such beasts and desired to sell them."
Theckla sighed, but her reverence for Apis and for all of his mysteries was utterly gone forever.
CHAPTER X.