rted his face. The
murket came to his side and smoothed the damp hair.

The old housekeeper entered with broth and bread and a bottle of wine.
Mentu broke the bread and filled the beaker, while Sema stood aloof and
gazed with troubled eyes at the unhappy face of the young master.
Silent, they watched him eat and drink, grieved because of the visible
effort it required and because no life or strength returned to him with
the breaking of his fast. When he had finished, the bowl and platter
were taken away, but at a sign the old housekeeper left the wine with
the murket. After she had gone Mentu glanced at the draggled dress of
his son.

"Thou needest, further, the attention of thy slave, Kenkenes," he
suggested.

The young man shook his head. "Not yet," he said. "My time is short,
and it is thy help I need."

The murket sat down beside his son.

Without further introduction Kenkenes plunged into his story. He had
had no time to tell it four days before. Then he had asked for Rachel
with his second word, and finding her not, had rushed immediately to
the search for her.

Mentu heard without comment till the story was done. Most of it he had
known from Hotep, and only the recent events at the tomb excited him.

When Kenkenes made an end the murket brought his clenched hand down on
the table with a force that made the lamp wink and the implements
rattle in their boxes above him.

"Curse that smooth villain Har-hat!" he cried in a tempest of wrath.
"A murrain upon his greedy, crafty lust! The gods blast him in his
knavery! Now is my precious amulet in his hands. Would it were
white-hot and clung to him like a leech!"

Kenkenes said nothing. The murket's wrath was more comforting to him
than tender words could have been.

"Who hath the ear of Meneptah?" the murket continued with increasing
vehemence. "Har-hat! And behold the miseries of Egypt! Shall we put
any great sin past the knave who sinneth monstrously, or divine his
methods who is a master of cunning? The land is entangled in
difficulty! Give me but a raveling fiber to pull, and, by the gods, I
know that we shall find Har-hat at the other end of it! He is
destroying Egypt for his ambition's sake! And that a son of mine--me!
the right hand of the Incomparable Pharaoh--should furnish meat for his
rending!" His voice failed him and he shook his clenched hands high
above his head in an abandon of fury.

"Did I not tell thee?" he burst fort