ye?"

"Overseers of the labyrinth."

"Why have ye barred the way to me?" asked he, and his hand and thin
lips began to tremble.

"We need not remind thee, holy man," said one of the overseers still
kneeling, "that some days ago Thou wert in the labyrinth, to which Thou
knowest the way as well as we, though Thou art uninitiated. Thou art
too great a sage not to know what our law is in such a case."

"What does this mean?" exclaimed Mefres in a raised voice. "Ye are
murderers sent by Her."

He did not finish. One of the men seized him by the arms, another
passed a kerchief over his head, and a third threw a transparent liquid
over his face. Mefres struggled a number of times, and fell. They
sprinkled him again. When he was dead they placed him in a niche,
pushed into his dead hand a papyrus, and vanished.

Three men dressed similarly chased after Lykon almost the instant that
he was pushed out of the temple by Mefres and found himself on the
empty street. The men had hidden not far from the door through which
the Greek issued, and at first let him pass freely. But soon one of
them noted something suspicious in his hand, so they followed.

A wonderful thing! Lykon though in a trance felt, as it were, the
pursuit; he turned quickly into a street full of movement, then to a
square where a multitude of people were circling about, and then ran to
the Nile by Fisher Street. There, at the end of some alley, he found a
small boat, sprang into it and began to cross the river with a speed
which was remarkable.

He was a couple of hundred yards from the shore when a boat pushed out
after him with one rower and three passengers. Barely had these left
land when a second boat appeared with two rowers and three passengers
also.

Both boats pursued Lykon with stubbornness. In that which had only one
rower sat the overseers of the labyrinth, looking diligently at their
rivals, as far as was permitted by the darkness, which came soon after
sundown.

"Who are those three?" whispered they among themselves. "Since the day
before yesterday they have been lurking around the temple, and today
they are pursuing Lykon. Do they wish to protect him from us?"

Lykon's small boat reached the other shore. The Greek sprang from it
and went swiftly toward the palace garden. Sometimes he staggered,
stopped, and seized his head, but after an instant he went forward
again, as if drawn by some incomprehensible attraction.

The overseers of t