y brother,"
he continued to one of the serving-priests, "let the witch be taken
into one of the consecrated rooms, and then, when you have sprinkled the
threshold, lead my lord Ani thither."

The high-priest went away, and into a small room which adjoined the hall
where the interview between the Regent and the old woman was about to
take place, and where the softest whisper spoken in the larger room
could be heard by means of an ingeniously contrived and invisible tube.

When Ani saw the old woman, he started back is horror; her appearance at
this moment was, in fact, frightful. The storm had tossed and torn her
garment and tumbled all her thick, white hair, so that locks of it fell
over her face. She leaned on a staff, and bending far forward looked
steadily at the Regent; and her eyes, red and smarting from the sand
which the wind had flung in her face, seemed to glow as she fixed them
on his. She looked as a hyaena might when creeping to seize its prey,
and Ani felt a cold shiver and he heard her hoarse voice addressing
him to greet him and to represent that he had chosen a strange hour for
requiring her to speak with him.

When she had thanked him for his promise of renewing her letter
of freedom, and had confirmed the statement that Paaker had had a
love-philter from her, she parted her hair from off her face--it
occurred to her that she was a woman.

The Regent sat in an arm-chair, she stood before him; but the struggle
with the storm had tired her old limbs, and she begged Ani to permit her
to be seated, as she had a long story to tell, which would put Paaker
into his power, so that he would find him as yielding as wax. The
Regent signed her to a corner of the room, and she squatted down on the
pavement.

When he desired her to proceed with her story, she looked at the floor
for some time in silence, and then began, as if half to herself:

"I will tell thee, that I may find peace--I do not want, when I die, to
be buried unembalmed. Who knows but perhaps strange things may happen
in the other world, and I would not wish to miss them. I want to see him
again down there, even if it were in the seventh limbo of the damned.
Listen to me! But, before I speak, promise me that whatever I tell thee,
thou wilt leave me in peace, and will see that I am embalmed when I am
dead. Else I will not speak."

Ani bowed consent.

"No-no," she said. "I will tell thee what to swear 'If I do not keep my
word to Hekt--who give