"Tell me, have you taken a bribe from this man? Yes or no? I must know the truth; it can influence my future for good or evil. You are an old and faithful servant, to whom I owe a great deal, and so I will forgive you if you were taken in by his artifices, but I must know the truth. I conjure you to tell me by the souls of your fathers gone to Osiris!"
The old man's sallow face turned ashy pale as he heard these words. He gulped and wheezed some time before he could find an answer, and at last, after choking down the tears which had forced their way to his eyes, said, in a half-angry, half-whining tone: "Didn't I say so? they've bewitched him, they've ruined him in this wicked land. Whatever a man would do himself, he thinks others are capable of. Aye, you may look as angry as you like; it matters but little to me. What can it matter indeed to an old man, who has served the same family faithfully and honestly for sixty years, if they call him at last a rogue, a knave, a traitor, nay even a murderer, if it should take their fancy."
And the scalding tears flowed down over the old man's cheeks, sorely against his will.
The easily-moved Phanes clapped him on the shoulder and said, turning to Nebenchari: "Hib is a faithful fellow. I give you leave to call me a rascal, if he has taken one single obolus from me."
The physician did not need Phanes' assurance; he had known his old servant too well and too long not to be able to read his simple, open features, on which his innocence was written as clearly as in the pages of an open book. "I did not mean to reproach you, old Hib," he said kindly, coming up to him. "How can any one be so angry at a simple question?"
"Perhaps you expect me to be pleased at such a shameful suspicion?"
"No, not that; but at all events now you can tell me what has happened at our house since I left."
"A pretty story that is! Why only to think of it makes my mouth as bitter, as if I were chewing wormwood."
"You said I had been robbed."
"Yes indeed: no one was ever so robbed before. There would have been some comfort if the knaves had belonged to the thieves' caste, for then we should have got the best part of our property back again, and should not after all have been worse off than many another; but when..."