w them; and as the boy grew to
manhood he taught him all his lore, until he, too, was wise enough to be
admitted into the communion of the gods, which afterwards was called by
the adepts the Perfect Knowledge. On the gem are engraved the three
symbols by which the Trinity--Osiris, Isis, and Horus; Father: Mother,
and Child, the antetype of Humanity--became known and worshipped. The
holy man divined that the boy was the incarnation of Horus sent thus to
earth to teach men the way of knowledge, which is the only
righteousness, since those who know all cannot sin. Where his house
stood was built the first Temple of the Divine Trinity, and of this
Horus became High Priest. He crowned the King in the land, and hung this
gem round his neck as the symbol of his kingship and the approval of the
gods.

"From the first king it was handed down from monarch to monarch through
all the changes of dynasties, until it hung from the royal chain of the
great Rameses; and by him it was given to his daughter Nitocris, thereby
making her Queen of Egypt after him; and she wore it on that fatal
night of the death-bridal when, rather than wed with you, who were then
Menkau-Ra, Lord of War, she flooded the banqueting hall of Pepi and
drowned herself and all her guests--which, Highness, is an omen that it
were well for you not to forget should you persist in your pursuit of
the daughter of Professor Marmion."

Oscarovitch was a man of vivid imagination, as all great soldiers and
statesmen must be, and so the story of the Horus Stone appealed strongly
to him; but what interested him perhaps even more was the spectacle of
this man, who had just been guilty of a peculiarly ghastly form of
murder, sitting there and telling with simple eloquence and evident
reverence the sacred Myth out of which what was perhaps the most ancient
religion in the world had evolved. He heard him with a silence of both
interest and respect until his last sentence. Then he got up and
stretched his arms out and said with a laugh:

"Omen, Phadrig! Your tale of the stone has interested me deeply, but I
believe no more in the omen than I do in the story. Ay, and even if I
did, I would dare all the omens that wizards ever invented for their own
profit in trying to make Nitocris Marmion what I want her to be, and
what she shall be unless she is the cause of my first failure to achieve
what I had set my heart upon. But you have not finished your story. Tell
me now how the sto