THE JUDGMENT OF THE GODS

      HIS LIFE, thought the old storyteller wearily, had been a hard one. When the floods were up over the land, he was to be found in the slums, singing songs, telling fortunes of a sort, and writing letters cheaply for poor folk who did not care if the flowery sentences he knew by rote expressed their meaning incorrectly. There was usually a lump of coarse dark bread available, sometimes with a handful of onions; and far more frequently than there should have been, there was beer. Sometimes there was a ragged bit of a cloak in which to wrap himself as he slept in the corner of a yard, or in a narrow alley where the feet of people coming home in the dark would stumble against him. He made a living of a sort, but not a good one, especially since he had grown too slow in his movements to help himself out by pilfering when he could not buy. Every year the street boys hustled him about more violently, the blind or crippled beggars grew more menacing, and the chattering slum dwellers showed less interest in his threadbare tales.
      It was far otherwise in the countryside when the harvest was in, and the storyteller went round from one little mud village to another with his small lyre and his writing instruments across his back. The whole populace, children and all, would squat around him in the yard of the headman's house or the open square before the village jail. They would rock with laughter over his feeble jokes and call again and again for a favorite song. There were dried fish, and occasionally even figs to go with the dark bread, and there was always beer. He would spend the night in somebody's hut on a soft pile of rushes, and in the morning he found fortunes to tell or letters to be written. People would solemnly ask his advice about the marriage of their daughters, or listen to his judgment on their petty disputes. For a few months the storyteller was a great man in the country, until the peasants had eaten most of their supplies, and grinding poverty set in once more.
      Unfortunately, none of these benefits could be obtained without walking. The storyteller groaned for the hundredth time as he looked at the muddy ditch beside him and wondered if he should scramble down the steep bank to cool his face. He had been detained by commissions and farewells until the sun stood high in the heavens, while the cheap little presents with which he had been burdened had proved too heavy for a poor old man. One by one, he had been forced to drop them regretfully into the ditch. To add insult to injury, he had been robbed, though one might have thought that a ragged old man with a lyre on his back would have been safe in broad daylight, and in the middle of a stretch of open fields. Perhaps he might have been, had he not seen a scrap of a bush in the ditch and gone down the bank to eat his lunch in its shadow and to sleep through an hour or two of the hottest part of the day.
      He had hardly taken out his bread and sat down to dabble his feet in the water before a great, rough, muddy hand gripped him firmly by the ankle. A huge man rose out of the slime with a squelching sound and snatched greedily for the bread. The storyteller staggered to his feet and tried to be off, but the bank was steep and his strength but feeble. In another moment his little tidbit of cheese had also vanished, and the beer which had been so heavy to carry was fast disappearing down the big man's throat. The storyteller watched in trembling fascination, uncertain whether to try to escape again.
      The big man showed his teeth, what there were of them, and said, "Grr! " deep down in his throat. The storyteller clutched frantically at the bank, clawed his way up it, and tottered off as fast as his legs would carry him down the road.
      The harvesting of the second crop was by no means over, yet the fields were strangely empty. There was no one working the swinging buckets which lifted water into the irrigation channels, even though second crops could only be raised by incessant labor of this sort. To his right along a second, larger ditch, there lay a village, but the storyteller was giving a wide berth to this on account of an unfortunate incident last year. There was nothing for it but to continue in a direction where he knew a welcome would await him, even though he was uncertain if his old legs would carry him so far in the heat.
      The storyteller groaned again and cast a glance uneasily behind him. Perhaps it might now be safe to go down to the water. He stopped, and as he did so he became aware of a confused noise of shouts and screams ahead.
Many people seemed to be yelling at once, and this was curious, since peasants did not collect together in a body during the middle of the working day.  Besides, it was the period of midday heat when all who could afford the time were resting, while those who were not had no extra energy left to make a noise. The storyteller forgot his own past wrongs for the moment while he thought rapidly over what he knew about the village in front.
      It was a little larger than the usual huddle of mud huts and possessed a fly-blown market square where there were always a few people with bits of pottery or linen to sell, which nobody ever wanted to buy. Such as it was, it was a center for the country round about it, and at the moment it sounded very much as though there was a riot going on.  The storyteller felt too old for such disturbances, and he saw no use in going into a place where the people were too busy to pay him attention. On the other hand, the village to his right was definitely unfriendly, and the robber was lurking somewhere between him and the place from which he had come. Perhaps it would be best to rest a little and drink some of that brackish water, while keeping his ears open for signs that excitement was dying away.
      There was not a bit of shade in this part of the ditch. Even the rushes had been cut, and goats had eaten every tiny blade of grass along the bank. Still, the old man could drink, wash off the dust, and wet his headcloth. Sleep was impossible in such a sun, but he was better off than on the causeway. He squatted down in the water for a while and listened to the noise.
      It was evident that the tumult was not decreasing as the sun went lower. On the contrary, it seemed if anything rather louder than before. When the old man reached the first small mud huts, each with its yard and familiar scattering of dingy playthings, he found them empty even of children. The entire populace was evidently on the square. The storyteller, who had heard certain rumors in the city during the last season, nodded to himself and shrugged resignedly. There was to be a war, no doubt, and men were being seized for the army. He might as well get back to the city if so, for with the countryside in an uproar he could hardly ply his trade. For the moment he must go on, however, because he was hungry. Years ago this would not have mattered, but things were more desperate with him now. If he was to make his way back to the city, he must first be fed.

      The village jail, facing on to the square, consisted of a small yard completely surrounded by a high wall of sunbaked brick. This had been given a coat of whitewash in the distant past, which was faintly visible as a band around the top of the wall, where it was too high for anyone to reach. Below, it had been completely rubbed off or covered with the sketches of village wits. In the center, flanked by two small square towers, was the gateway, crudely but effectively closed by a latticework of poles surmounted by a palisade of sharpened stakes. Around this surged a mob of people, mostly women, holding up various articles, waving frantically, or simply yelling. Children of all sizes bobbed in and out of the throng, screaming rhythmically, helped on by various cuffs from desperate mothers who felt they could not express their feelings without more noise. Now and then a woman could claw her way half up the lattice, only to be dislodged by a resounding whack delivered from somewhere inside. Occasionally one would fight her way back through the throng, face red, dress half torn off, and bosom heaving, while she shrieked more often than not at the top of her voice.

      Around the edges of the square, the crowd was thinner. Older people were standing about or sitting cross-legged and swaying back and forth to the tune of a regular wailing, which they could keep up without much effort for hours. Most of them held food on their laps, though they were not eating. It was good food, as the old man could see, and enough for several days. His mouth watered as he began to make his way among them, peering about in the hopes of recognizing somebody he knew.
      A little side door at the foot of one of the towers popped open, and two small round men came tumbling out like peas from a bursting pod. They were exactly alike down to the smallest detail, except that one of them held a staff in his hand and the other did not. Each waggled a finger and screamed at the other, while with an even wilder howl those who were nearest made a rush for them. In a very few seconds there was nothing to be seen but a swirling crowd, around which the children hopped and cried as before.
      The old storyteller, still hovering on the outskirts, saw a hand and half a shoulder appear between two struggling forms. With a sudden impulse, he caught hold and pulled. The owner of the hand followed him suddenly, so that they both staggered a few paces, tripped, and fell to the ground with a crash.
      "Ugh!" gasped the storyteller, confusedly sorting himself out from his prize and blessing the swift glance which had told him who was the owner of that hand. One of the troubles of growing old is the difficulty of remembering names and faces, so important for a man who makes new friends or enemies daily. Twins, however, are rare, and these had been conspicuous in the village for a moderate amount of wealth, or what passed for such where all were poor.
      "Good day to you, Keres, or Kames," he remarked.
      "Keres, Keres," answered the little man mechanically, sitting up and feeling for his headcloth, which had dropped off, exposing his naked head, badly shaven and ringed by tufts of spiky hair. His face fell ludicrously as he realized his loss and began to peer around him. At this point his eye fell on the storyteller, and he sat up with a start. "The storyteller!" he said with pleased surprise, instantly dropping his voice and adding gloomily, "Nobody wants to listen to your stories now.”
      "Is it recruiting?" asked the storyteller sympathetically.
      Keres nodded. "They came about sunup," he said, "and we had not been warned in time to send our young men away. We shall never see any of them again!" He began to rock himself back and forth and to pour dust on his head.
     The storyteller did not contradict him, knowing very well that the army never did release soldiers unless they were crippled, and that few of these conscripts survived longer than a year or two. "But surely the village has a quota?" he said in consoling fashion. "They will not take them all."
      Keres stopped rocking, but hunched his shoulders gloomily. "There is a quota," he admitted, "but it was fixed in the old king's time, in the good days when there was a busy market here. My brother Kames says he must find such numbers that he does not even dare to release my son. My son!" He put up his hands and began again to smear the dust across his face. Tears gathered in his eyes. "Ramses, my son!" he said.
      "If Kames is the headman," agreed the storyteller, "he will be beaten with many blows unless he supplies his count of men."
      "Do you suppose his son is among them?" demanded Keres bitterly. "Yet when I go to him, my brother and but an hour my elder, ‘I must have one son or the other,' says he, 'if not Antef. then Ranises'; and with this he bids me be content."
      "Why then, he has done much if you may keep Antef, while other men lose all." 
      "Antef!" exclaimed the other vehemently. "That fool! That clod!" His voice broke, and he swallowed with a visible effort. "See here, old man," he continued when he had somewhat mastered his emotion, "it sometimes happens that a man may have two sons, for one of whom his heart yearns terribly, while the other is but an ox, a useful beast. Give Antef work, no matter how heavy, and he will labor steadily from dawn to dark. Yet while he is swinging the water buckets, if he should chance to see a stray goat nibbling at the springing wheat, he will go on watering as he has been bidden, though the crop for which he labors is being eaten up before his eyes. So slow and heavy is he that even his wife scarcely knows that he can speak."
      "Send Antef, then, and keep Ramses, whom you love so well."
      "Alas!" cried the old man desperately, "I cannot. I looked for Antef among the prisoners, but he has disappeared."
      He began to wail again, while the storyteller, who was hardened to other people's miseries, bethought himself once more of his own. "We can do nothing," he suggested, while we both are weary. Besides, we have a day, or possibly two to make a plan before the young men are marched away.”
      Keres rose to the bait quite willingly. "Things may look easier when we have eaten and rested," he admitted. "Come with me, and Antef's woman may prepare us food, since she has no reason to run shrieking about the square."

       The house of Keres was not pretentious, though larger than many in the village. It consisted of two rooms built of mud brick and so low that a tall man might have easily put his head through the light covering of palm leaves which formed the roof. A grotesque little image of Bes, the countryman’s god of good luck, grinned from a tiny platform against one wall. For the rest, the front room was furnished with a corn-bin, a grindstone, and a few utensils, together with a number of sleeping mats which were surrounded with an edging of burrs to discourage scorpions. Outside in the yard there was the usual heap of fuel in the shape of dried cow dung molded into bricks, while a few dusty bushes and a straggling tree afforded protection from the sun.
      Antef's woman, with two small boys clinging to her skirt, came out from the inner room with food and a skin of beer. She was bent from heavy loads like all village girls, but there was a steadiness about her look as though her youthful strength was not yet quite exhausted. "Did you hear news of Antef, my father?" asked she in a low, clear voice of surprising firmness.
      Keres shrugged his shoulders. "No one has seen him since he went out to work the buckets a little before dawn."
      "To work the buckets!" exclaimed the storyteller, on whom a little food was having an invigorating effect. "Is Antef a big man whose teeth are jagged and broken? He lies in the slime of the ditch a little way upstream from the buckets, safe enough under an overhanging bush and needing nothing, since he took my bread and cheese to feed himself."
      The woman made no answer to this reassurance, save to put up her hand to her mouth with a little gasp. Keres, on the other hand, began scrambling eagerly to his feet. "Then all is well," cried he with brutal cheerfulness. "We will send the soldiers to fetch Antef so that my brother may release me Ramses in his place!"
      "No!" With a sudden, fierce movement the woman darted into the doorway where she stood ready for a struggle with anyone who tried to pass.
      She was a big and powerful woman. Old Keres looked at her helplessly a moment, and then turned to the storyteller in bewildered irritation. "Teach me to reason with a woman who has born sons to a man! How is it possible that she should care for such an ox?"
      "Even the ox can be faithful," cried the woman hotly. "Shall we sell him to the butcher, though it be our hour of need? "
      "Better the dumb beast than the son of the house," retorted Keres, making a tentative step forward, but backing hastily as the woman lunged. "Speak to her, old man," he urged, “and tell her to mind her duty, which is obedience to her elders in the house."
      The storyteller, who was chewing his way methodically through a lump of bread as hard as a brick and freely mixed with small pieces broken from the grindstone, made signs that his mouth was too full to answer, while he hastily considered what to say. It was his guiding principle in all disputes to make no enemies, or at any rate to be on the winning side. He could not afford to quarrel with Keres, who had influence in the village and might force him to avoid the place for years to come. On the other hand, two old men were no match for such a woman, even if he had not long ago ceased to love a fight. He sighed, feeling for the thousandth time that life was hard when one grew old.
      "Let the woman speak first," he said finally, temporizing in the hope that her anger would spend itself in tears or in a rush of hasty words. He was disappointed, however, in her self-command.
      "It was you yourself, old Keres, who chose me," she began defiantly, "telling my father that Antef needed a woman who would be wise enough for both. Now therefore let me speak for Antef, who is fit for nothing but the simple tasks which he has known all his life. If you let the soldiers take him, he will be beaten, not one day, but every day until he dies. He will be like an animal who does not know what his master wants from him."
      "That may be," interrupted Keres, "and I am sorry for it. Nevertheless, Ramses will also die, if not under the stick, then of thirst in the desert, by pestilence, or at an enemy's hands. Since I am the father of these two young men, their lives are rightly mine. It is but just that I should save the one whom we most need."
      "Let the gods give judgment," cried the woman from the doorway. "Would it not have been Ramses who went out early in the morning if the gods had wished to save his life? Abide, then, by the judgment of the gods!"
      "The judgment of the gods!" repeated the storyteller curiously. "It is a fine phrase and worthy of a woman who must be wise for two. Now did the gods repent of their judgment when they sent me to this house with news of Antef? Such matters, I think, are too hard for my poor brain."
      The woman made no answer to that, but she straddled across the doorway with the air of one who did not intend to change her mind. The storyteller was forced to try a different tack. "Let us wait till morning," he suggested pacifically, "and ponder the matter. If tomorrow we cannot agree, there will still be time to argue before the soldiers march our men away."
      "Then I will sleep across the doorway," responded the woman with quick suspicion, "and do you two lie tonight in the inner room."
      The inner room was even smaller than the outer one, and it was encumbered by the round and sooty hearth on which the woman did the cooking for the house. Still, there were mats here also, and a lamp of sorts which gave out much smoke and a very evil odor. By its dubious light the little room looked very much like a prison, especially for old men who could not climb out through the flimsy roof. The tiny window, or rather smoke vent, was far too small to provide a way of escape. The storyteller wandered over to the water jar, put in a hand, and cooled his heated face. He helped himself from a plaited string of onions as he strolled across to squat by Keres, who had thrown himself down on a mat in furious despair.
      "This wise woman is but a fool," said the storyteller contemptuously, "to think that she can match her country wits with mine."
      Keres started violently, but the storyteller was quick to silence him with a hand across his lips. "Quietly! " he murmured. "Can you not hear the woman move? What message shall I take to your brother Kames, while you stay here and quiet her suspicions until day?"
      "If you could but get out," said Keres in low tones, "a letter would be safest. It must not be known that my brother will do this favor for me."
      The storyteller looked dubious at this suggestion. "Can Kames read?" he objected.
      "How should he?" answered Keres simply. "There are scribes with the soldiers who do that work."
      The storyteller still was reluctant, pointing out that letters sometimes went astray. "No more than messages," Keres argued, "and they are more secret. It would be best perhaps if you would go into the jail and speak with my brother there yourself."
      The storyteller shuddered. "A man should stay out of trouble when he is old," said he. "I will write the letter for you if you will have it so." He turned to fumble in his pack for the materials which he always carried.
      The woman in the doorway shifted and propped herself up so that she should not go to sleep. Let the old men burn the light if they pleased and sit grumbling together. They would have plenty of time to get tired of gossiping before the soldiers had marched away. Meanwhile, if they called out, nobody would hear them, since the neighbors were all encamped on the square. The sound of murmuring would keep her wakeful, which was just as well because her labors were heavy and the day had been long. When the light went out at last, she found herself nodding. Again and again her head fell forward on her chest and awakened her.

       There was a loud yell from the inner room, followed by a crash and a sound of groans. The woman, recalled to her senses with a start, scrambled up and put out her hands to block the doorway. "What is it?" she called out sharply over the din.
      "It is the old storyteller," answered Keres panting. "He fell in a fit and broke the water jar. A devil is in him."
      "I will come," said she, reassured, and started across the floor, only to collide with her father-in-law in the darkness of the inner doorway.
      "Stay out, you fool!" gasped Keres, pushing at her with both hands. "Did I not say there was a devil in the man? Light the lamp in the outer room and burn herbs before the image, lest the devil tire of the old man and seize upon your sons.”
      One of the children had already set up a wail, and the woman needed no urging. With trembling hands she lighted the lamp and made haste to kindle fire before the image, muttering what charms she knew while the room was filling with the aromatic smoke.
      "Good!" cried Keres, appearing for a moment around the corner of the door. "Hear how the devil shakes the man as he feels our power! He made a sign in the air and vanished within.
      In very truth the struggles had increased to the point where they shook the house. Both children were now screaming at the top of their lungs, and outside a dog began to bark.
      While the woman hurried over to hush her babies, all the dogs in town took up the matter, howling defiance at devils with all their might.
      Quite suddenly all was over. With a great shout, the devil left the old man, who ceased thrashing and lay quiet without so much as a groan. The children hushed their wailing. The barking died gradually away to snarls. A cool little breeze from the inner room was already scattering the smoke as old Keres put out his head and gestured at the lamp. "The man lies quietly," he said, "as those do who have conquered a devil. Let us sleep while we can, for when dawn comes, there is much to be discussed." He went back into the inner room, and the woman could hear him straighteming the storyteller's body on its mat.
      The old storyteller chuckled in the darkness as he made his way down the causeway to the point where the irrigation ditch branched out from the big canal. It had been too easy. First there was the breaking of the water pitcher over the wall to soften the dried clay into its original mud. Then there was the hasty enlargement of the window under cover of the struggle, the flight through barking dogs to the village, the letter pressed into the hand of an incurious girl. Long before the woman discovered his absence, the soldiers should have seized their prey. The storyteller shrugged. He wished he felt perfectly certain that the scheme had succeeded after all.
      A man need not read or write too well to pick up an occasional meal by writing letters for the poor. Some twenty sentences written in characters which he can learn to copy in youth will last him a lifetime, since one man's need is very like another's. When he becomes old, however, and his memory fails him, he begins to jumble together the pictures which were once distinct in his mind. As a rule, even this is not important, since he who sends a letter will usually blame the receiver for reading it wrong. But in this case - the storyteller quickened his pace, wondering uneasily whether or not the letter was clear. A notion struck him. "The woman was right after all," he said aloud with a chuckle. "The matter is left in this fashion to the judgment of the gods."
      Another thought came to him suddenly and stopped him full in his tracks. I might as well have sided with the woman, “ said he, "and saved myself this trouble. As long as I do not know how the letter was written, I shall never dare enter the village, lest Keres revenge on me the loss of his son."