id each one know if it was he himself who lay dead or his
brother who had sat by his side.

But Meriamun looked down the hall with cold eyes, for she feared neither
Death nor Life, nor God nor man.

And while she looked and while the Wanderer counted, there rose a faint
murmuring sound from the city without, a sound that grew and grew, the
thunder of myriad feet that run before the death of kings. Then the
doors burst asunder and a woman sped through them in her night robes,
and in her arms she bore the naked body of a boy.

"Pharaoh!" she cried, "Pharaoh, and thou, O Queen, look upon thy
son--thy firstborn son--dead is thy son, O Pharaoh! Dead is thy son, O
Queen! In my arms he died suddenly as I lulled him to his rest," and she
laid the body of the child down on the board among the vessels of gold,
among the garlands of lotus flowers and the beakers of rose-red wine.

Then Pharaoh rose and rent his purple robes and wept aloud. Meriamun
rose too, and lifting the body of her son clasped it to her breast, and
her eyes were terrible with wrath and grief, but she wept not.

"See now the curse that this evil woman, this False Hathor, hath brought
upon us," she said.

But the very guests sprang up crying, "It is not the Hathor whom we
worship, it is not the Holy Hathor, it is the Gods of those dark Apura
whom thou, O Queen, wilt not let go. On thy head and the head of Pharaoh
be it," and even as they cried the murmur without grew to a shriek of
woe, a shriek so wild and terrible that the Palace walls rang. Again
that shriek rose, and yet a third time, never was such a cry heard
in Egypt. And now for the first time in all his days the face of the
Wanderer grew white with fear, and in fear of heart he prayed for
succour to his Goddess--to Aphrodite, the daughter of Dione.

Again the doors behind them burst open and the Guards flocked in--mighty
men of many foreign lands; but now their faces were wan, their eyes
stared wide, and their jaws hung down. But at the sound of the clanging
of their harness the strength of the Wanderer came back to him again,
for the Gods and their vengeance he feared, but not the sword of man.
And now once more the bow sang aloud. He grasped it, he bent it with his
mighty knee, and strung it, crying:

"Awake, Pharaoh, awake! Foes draw on. Say, be these all the men?"

Then the Captain answered, "These be all of the Guard who are left
living in the Palace. The rest are stark, smitten by the ang