g, tearing
their hair and covering their faces with dust.

The noise was loud and distracting, and when its violence diminished,
and the work-people went back to their business, the east wind brought
the echo of the cries of the dwellers in the Necropolis, perhaps too,
those of the citizens of Thebes itself.

"Bad news," said the inspector of the victims, "cannot fail to reach
us soon from the king and the army; he will regret the death of the ram
which we called by his name more than that of Apis. It is a bad--a very
bad omen."

"My lost husband Rui, who rests in Osiris, foresaw it all," said the
widow. "If only I dared to speak I could tell a good deal that many
might find unpleasant."

The inspector of sacrifices smiled, for he knew that the late superior
of the temple of Hatasu had been an adherent of the old royal family,
and he replied:

"The Sun of Rameses may be for a time covered with clouds, but neither
those who fear it nor those who desire it will live to see its setting."

The priest coldly saluted the lady, and went into the house of a weaver
in which he had business, and the widow got into her litter which was
waiting at the gate.

The old paraschites Pinem had joined with his fellows in the lamentation
for the sacred beasts, and was now sitting on the hard pavement of the
dissecting room to eat his morsel of food--for it was noon.

The stone room in which he was eating his meal was badly lighted; the
daylight came through a small opening in the roof, over which the sun
stood perpendicularly, and a shaft of bright rays, in which danced the
whirling motes, shot down through the twilight on to the stone pavement.
Mummy-cases leaned against all the walls, and on smooth polished slabs
lay bodies covered with coarse cloths. A rat scudded now and then
across the floor, and from the wide cracks between the stones sluggish
scorpions crawled out.

The old paraschites was long since blunted to the horror which pervaded
this locality. He had spread a coarse napkin, and carefully laid on it
the provisions which his wife had put into his satchel; first half a
cake of bread, then a little salt, and finally a radish.

But the bag was not yet empty.

He put his hand in and found a piece of meat wrapped up in two
cabbage-leaves. Old Hekt had brought a leg of a gazelle from Thebes
for Uarda, and he now saw that the women had put a piece of it into his
little sack for his refreshment. He looked at the gift wit