At this moment Pinem's wife appeared, and with her Pentaur. She had
found not Nebsecht, but Pentaur, who had returned to the temple after
his speech. She had told him of the demon who had fallen upon her
husband, and implored him to come with her. Pentaur immediately followed
her in his working dress, just as he was, without putting on the white
priest's robe, which he did not wish to wear on this expedition.

When they drew near to the paraschites' hovel, he perceived the tumult
among the people, and, loud above all the noise, heard Uarda's shrill
cry of terror. He hurried forward, and in the dull light of the
scattered fire-brands and colored lanterns, he saw the black hand of the
soldier clutching the hair of the helpless child; quick as thought he
gripped the soldier's throat with his iron fingers, seized him round the
body, swung him in the air, and flung him like a block of stone right
into the little yard of the hut.

The people threw themselves on the champion in a frenzy of rage, but he
felt a sudden warlike impulse surging up in him, which he had never
felt before. With one wrench he pulled out the heavy wooden pole, which
supported the awning which the old paraschites had put up for his sick
grandchild; he swung it round his head, as if it were a reed, driving
back the crowd, while he called to Uarda to keep close to him.

"He who touches the child is a dead man!" he cried. "Shame on
you!--falling on a feeble old man and a helpless child in the middle of
a holy festival!"

For a moment the crowd was silent, but immediately after rushed forward
with fresh impetus, and wilder than ever rose the shouts of:

"Tear him to pieces! burn his house down!"

A few artisans from Thebes closed round the poet, who was not
recognizable as a priest. He, however, wielding his tent-pole, felled
them before they could reach him with their fists or cudgels, and down
went every man on whom it fell. But the struggle could not last long,
for some of his assailants sprang over the fence, and attacked him in
the rear. And now Pentaur was distinctly visible against a background of
flaring light, for some fire-brands had fallen on the dry palm-thatch of
the hovel behind him, and roaring flames rose up to the dark heavens.

The poet heard the threatening blaze behind him. He put his left hand
round the head of the trembling girl, who crouched beside him, and
feeling that now they both were lost, but that to his latest breath he
m