ven the shrill-voiced insects had ceased their
cries. Moreover, the great city below was quiet as a home of the dead.
It was as though the presage of some advancing doom scared the world to
silence. For without doubt doom was in the air. All felt it down to
the nurse woman, who cowered close as she dared to the chair of her
mistress, and even in that heat shivered from time to time.

Presently little Seti awoke, and began to prattle about something he had
dreamed.

"What did you dream, my son?" asked his father.

"I dreamed," he answered in his baby talk, "that a woman, dressed as
Mother was in the temple, took me by the hand and led me into the air. I
looked down, and saw you and Mother with white faces and crying. I began
to cry too, but the woman with the feather cap told me not as she was
taking me to a beautiful big star where Mother would soon come to find
me."

The Prince and I looked at each other and Merapi feigned to busy herself
with hushing the child to sleep again. It drew towards midnight and
still no one seemed minded to go to rest. Old Bakenkhonsu appeared and
began to say something about the night being very strange and unrestful,
when, suddenly, a little bat that was flitting to and fro above us fell
upon his head and thence to the ground. We looked at it, and saw that it
was dead.

"Strange that the creature should have died thus," said Bakenkhonsu,
when, behold! another fell to the ground near by. The black kitten which
belonged to Little Seti saw it fall and darted from beside his bed where
it was sleeping. Before ever it reached the bat, the creature wheeled
round, stood upon its hind legs, scratching at the air about it, then
uttered one pitiful cry and fell over dead.

We stared at it, when suddenly far away a dog howled in a very piercing
fashion. Then a cow began to bale as these beasts do when they have lost
their calves. Next, quite close at hand but without the gates, there
arose the ear-curdling cry of a woman in agony, which on the instant
seemed to be echoed from every quarter, till the air was full of
wailing.

"Oh, Seti! Seti!" exclaimed Merapi, in a voice that was rather a hiss
than a whisper, "look at your son!"

We sprang to where the babe lay, and looked. He had awakened and was
staring upward with wide-opened eyes and frozen face. The fear, if such
it were, passed from his features, though still he stared. He rose to
his little feet, always looking upwards. Then a smile c