She answered, No, as she had
another companion.
"Who is it?" he asked jealously. "Show me and I will fight him."
"No one that you can see, Rames," she replied. "Only my own Ka."
"Your Ka! I have heard of Kas, but I never saw one. What is it like?"
"Just like me, except that it throws no shadow, and only comes when I
am quite by myself, and then, although I hear it often, I see it rarely,
for it is mixed up with the light."
"I don't believe in Kas," exclaimed Rames scornfully, "you make them up
out of your head."
A little while after this talk something happened that caused Rames to
change his mind about Kas, or at any rate the Ka of Tua. In a hidden
court of the temple was a deep pool of water with cemented sides, where,
it was said, lived a sacred crocodile, an enormous beast that had
dwelt there for hundreds of years. Rames and Tua having heard of this
crocodile, often talked of it and longed to see it, but could not for
there was a high wall round the tank, and in it a door of copper that
was kept locked, except when once in every eight days the priests took
in food to the crocodile--living goats and sheep, and sometimes a calf,
none of which ever came back again.
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