ched out to seize my innocent wife, who,
as I now know, loathes him as a toad--"

"What was that?" exclaimed the king. "I thought I heard a groan
outside."

He went up to the window and looked out, but he did not see the pioneer,
who watched every motion of the king, and who, as soon as he perceived
that his involuntary sigh of anguish had been heard, stretched himself
close under the balustrade. Mena had not risen from his knees when the
king once more turned to him.

"Pardon me," he said again. "Let me be near thee again as before,
and drive thy chariot. I live only through thee, I am of no worth but
through thee, and by thy favor, my king, my lord, my father!"

Rameses signed to his favorite to rise. "Your request was granted," said
he, "before you made it. I am still in your debt on your fair wife's
account. Thank Nefert--not me, and let us give thanks to the Immortals
this day with especial fervor. What has it not brought forth for us! It
has restored to me you two friends, whom I regarded as lost to me, and
has given me in Pentaur another son."

A low whistle sounded through the night air; it was Katuti's last
signal.

Paaker blew up the tinder, laid it in the bole under the parapet, and
then, unmindful of his own danger, raised himself to listen for any
further words.

"I entreat thee," said the Regent, approaching Rameses, "to excuse me.
I fully appreciate thy favors, but the labors of the last few days have
been too much for me; I can hardly stand on my feet, and the guard of
honor--"

"Mena will watch," said the king. "Sleep in all security, cousin. I will
have it known to all men that I have put away from me all distrust of
you. Give the my night-robe, Mena. Nay-one thing more I must tell you.
Youth smiles on the young, Ani. Bent-Anat has chosen a worthy husband,
my preserver, the poet Pentaur. He was said to be a man of humble
origin, the son of a gardener of the House of Seti; and now what do I
learn through Ameni? He is the true son of the dead Mohar, and the foul
traitor Paaker is the gardener's son. A witch in the Necropolis changed
the children. That is the best news of all that has reached me on this
propitious day, for the Mohar's widow, the noble Setchem, has been
brought here, and I should have been obliged to choose between two
sentences on her as the mother of the villain who has escaped us. Either
I must have sent her to the quarries, or have had her beheaded before
all the people--In