or of evil
to come were always in his mind.

Meriamun looked up swiftly.

"Greeting, Stranger," she said. "Thou comest in warlike guise to grace
our feast."

"Methought, Royal Lady," he made answer, "that anon when I would have
laid it by, this bow of mine sang to me of present war. Therefore I am
come armed--even to thy feast."

"Has thy bow such foresight, Eperitus?" said the Queen. "I have heard
but once of such a weapon, and that in a minstrel's tale. He came to
our Court with his lyre from the Northern Sea, and he sang of the Bow of
Odysseus."

"Minstrel or not, thou does well to come armed, Wanderer," said the
Pharaoh; "for if thy bow sings, my own heart mutters much to me of war
to be."

"Follow me, Wanderer, however it fall out," said the Queen.

So he followed her and the Pharaoh till they came to a splendid hall,
carven round with images of fighting and feasting. Here, on the painted
walls, Rameses Miamun drove the thousands of the Khita before his single
valour; here men hunted wild-fowl through the marshes with a great cat
for their hound. Never had the Wanderer beheld such a hall since he
supped with the Sea King of the fairy isle. On the dais, raised above
the rest, sat the Pharaoh, and by him sat Meriamun the Queen, and by the
Queen sat the Wanderer in the golden armour of Paris, and he leaned the
black bow against his ivory chair.

Now the feast went on and men ate and drank. The Queen spoke little, but
she watched the Wanderer beneath the lids of her deep-fringed eyes.

Suddenly, as they feasted and grew merry, the doors at the end of the
chamber were thrown wide, the Guards fell back in fear, and behold, at
the end of the hall, stood two men. Their faces were tawny, dry, wasted
with desert wandering; their noses were hooked like eagles' beaks, and
their eyes were yellow as the eyes of lions. They were clad in rough
skins of beasts, girdled about their waists with leathern thongs, and
fiercely they lifted their naked arms, and waved their wands of cedar.
Both men were old, one was white-bearded, the other was shaven smooth
like the priests of Egypt. As they lifted the rods on high the Guards
shrank like beaten hounds, and all the guests hid their faces, save
Meriamun and the Wanderer alone. Even Pharaoh dared not look on them,
but he murmured angrily in his beard:

"By the name of Osiris," he said, "here be those Soothsayers of the
Apura once again. Now Death waits on those who let them pas