nt for a few minutes, then the thin one said:

"The chariot has stopped at the first tavern. So much the better. The
Roman has valuable cattle in his shafts, and at the inn down there, there
is a shed for horses. Here in this hole there is hardly a stall for an
ass, and nothing but sour wine and mouldy beer. I don't like the rubbish,
and save my coin for Alexandria and white Mariotic; that is strengthening
and purifies the blood. For the present I only wish we were as well off
as those horses; they will have plenty of time to recover their breath."

"Yes, plenty of time," answered the other with a broad grin, and then he
with his companion withdrew into the room to fill his cup.

Klea too could hear that the chariot which had brought her hither, had
halted at the farther tavern, but it did not occur to her that the driver
had gone in to treat himself to wine with half of Irene's drachma. The
horses should make up for the lost time, and they could easily do it, for
when did the king's banquets ever end before midnight?

As soon as Plea saw that the assassins were filling their earthen cups,
she slipped softly on tiptoe behind the tavern; the moon came out from
behind the clouds for a few minutes, she sought and found the short way
by the desert-path to the Apis-tombs, and hastened rapidly along it. She
looked straight before her, for whenever she glanced at the road-side,
and her eye was caught by some dried up shrub of the desert, silvery in
the pale moonlight, she fancied she saw behind it the face of a murderer.

The skeletons of fallen beasts standing up out of the dust, and the
bleached jawbones of camels and asses, which shone much whiter than the
desert-sand on which they lay, seemed to have come to life and motion,
and made her think of the tiger-teeth of the bearded ruffian.

The clouds of dust driven in her face by the warm west wind, which had
risen higher, increased her alarm, for they were mingled with the colder
current of the night-breeze; and again and again she felt as if spirits
were driving her onwards with their hot breath, and stroking her face
with their cold fingers. Every thing that her senses perceived was
transformed by her heated imagination into a fearful something; but more
fearful and more horrible than anything she heard, than any phantom that
met her eye in the ghastly moonlight, were her own thoughts of what was
to be done now, in the immediate future--of the fearful fate that
threate