om, and the leper from the Temple gates. They
were mad with lust of life, a starveling life that the King had taxed,
when he let not the Apura go. They were mad with fear of death; their
women followed them with dead children in their arms. They smote down
the golden furnishings, they tore the silken hangings, they cast the
empty cups of the feast at the faces of trembling ladies, and cried
aloud for the blood of the King.

"Where is Pharaoh?" they yelled, "show us Pharaoh and the Queen
Meriamun, that we may slay them. Dead are our first born, they lie
in heaps as the fish lay when Sihor ran red with blood. Dead are they
because of the curse that has been brought upon us by the prophets of
the Apura, whom Pharaoh, and Pharaoh's Queen, yet hold in Khem."

Now as they cried they saw Pharaoh Meneptah cowering behind the double
line of Guards, and they saw the Queen Meriamun who cowered not, but
stood silent above the din. Then she thrust her way through the Guards,
and yet holding the body of the child to her breast, she stood before
them with eyes that flashed more brightly than the uraeus crown upon her
brow.

"Back!" she cried, "back! It is not Pharaoh, it is not I, who have
brought this death upon you. For we too have death here!" and she held
up the body of her dead son. "It is that False Hathor whom ye worship,
that Witch of many a voice and many a face who turns your hearts faint
with love. For her sake ye endure these woes, on her head is all this
death. Go, tear her temple stone from stone, and rend her beauty limb
from limb and be avenged and free the land from curses."

A moment the people stood and hearkened, muttering as stands the
lion that is about to spring, while those who pressed without cried:
"Forward! Forward! Slay them! Slay them!" Then as with one voice they
screamed:

"The Hathor we love, but you we hate, for ye have brought these woes
upon us, and ye shall die."

They cried, they brawled, they cast footstools and stones at the Guards,
and then a certain tall man among them drew a bow. Straight at the
Queen's fair breast he aimed his arrow, and swift and true it sped
towards her. She saw the light gleam upon its shining barb, and then she
did what no woman but Meriamun would have done, no, not to save herself
from death--she held out the naked body of her son as a warrior holds
a shield. The arrow struck through and through it, piercing the tender
flesh, aye, and pricked her breast beyond, so