Helen?"

And then, in as few words as might be, he told Rei how he had been led
away by the magic of Meriamun, how he who should have sworn by the Star
had sworn by the Snake.

When Rei heard that the Wanderer had sworn by the Snake, he shuddered.
"Now I know all," he said. "Fear not, thou Wanderer, not on thee shall
all the evil fall, nor on that Immortal whom thou dost love; the Snake
that beguiled thee shall avenge thee also."

"Rei," the Wanderer said, "one thing I charge thee. I know that I go
down to my death. Therefore I pray thee seek out her whom thou namest
the Hathor and tell her all the tale of how I was betrayed. So shall I
die happily. Tell her also that I crave her forgiveness and that I love
her and her only."

"This I will do if I may," Rei answered. "And now the soldiers murmur
and I must be gone. Listen, the might of the Nine-bow barbarians
rolls up the eastern branch of Sihor. But one day's march from On the
mountains run down to the edge of the river, and those mountains are
pierced by a rocky pass through which the foe will surely come. Set thou
thy ambush there, Wanderer, there at Prosopis--so shalt thou smite them.
Farewell. I will seek out the Hathor if in any way I can come at her,
and tell her all. But of this I warn thee, the hour is big with Fate,
and soon will spawn a monstrous birth. Strange visions of doom and death
passed before mine eyes as I slept last night. Farewell!"

Then he went back to the camel and climbed it, and passing round the
army vanished swiftly in a cloud of dust.

The Wanderer also went back to the host, where the captains murmured
because of the halt, and mounted his chariot. But he would tell nothing
of what the man had said to him, save that he was surely a messenger
from the Under-world to instruct him in the waging of the war.

Then the chariot and the horsemen passed on again, till they came to the
city of On, and found the host of Pharaoh gathering in the great walled
space that is before the Temple of Ra. And there they pitched their camp
hard by the great obelisks that stand at the inner gate, which Rei the
architect fashioned by Thebes, and the divine Rameses Miamun set up to
the glory of Ra for ever.

V

THE VOICE OF THE DEAD

When Meriamun the Queen had watched the chariot of the Wanderer till it
was lost in the dust of the desert, she passed down from the Palace roof
to the solitude of her chamber.

Here she sat in her chamber till the da