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Rh he said, for suddenly she gave a sobbing laugh and crouched to kiss his feet.

"I have told her," said Thoth, "that she need labour no more at her appointed tasks, and will never again be punished. But the thing which pleased her most, and which she could not believe, was that without her request she would never see any of the masked rulers."

"What were her tasks?" Daphne asked.

"It would be difficult to explain," said Thoth. "They were all most irksome, most useless, most trifling, but they were exacted with dreadful punishments. She had to count grains of sand, to unravel tangled knots, to learn by rote strings of meaningless sounds, and to discover all kinds of intricate puzzles."

To confirm his words, Thoth destroyed the various instruments of labour, scattered the sand, tore up the parchments, and stamped upon the fragments of the broken toys. The