ead! Pharaoh is dead!"

Then Meriamun arose, and followed by the ladies, rushed from her
chamber.

"Who dreams so evilly?" she said. "Who dreams and cries aloud in his
haunted sleep?"

"O Queen, it is no dream," said one. "Pass into the ante-chamber and
see. There lies Pharaoh dead, and with no wound upon him to tell the
manner of his end."

Then Meriamun cried aloud with a great cry, and threw her hair about her
face, while tears fell from her dark eyes. She passed into the chamber,
and there, fallen on his back and cold, lay Pharaoh in his royal robes.
Awhile the Queen looked upon him as one who is dumb with grief. Then she
lifted up her voice and cried:

"Still is the curse heavy upon Khem and the people of Khem. Pharaoh lies
dead; yea, he is dead who has no wound, and this I say, that he is
slain of the witchcraft of her whom men name the Hathor. Oh, my Lord,
my Lord!" and kneeling, she laid her hand upon his breast; "by this dead
heart of thine I swear that I will wreak thy murder on her who wrought
it. Lift him up! Lift up this poor clay, that was the first of kings.
Clothe him in the robes of death, and set him on the knees of Osiris in
the Temple of Osiris. Then go forth through the city and call out this,
the Queen's command; call it from street to street. This is the Queen's
command, that 'every woman in Tanis who has lost son, or husband, or
brother, or kin or lover, through the witchcraft of the False Hathor,
or by the plagues that she hath wrought on Khem, or in the war with the
Apura, whom she caused to fly from Khem, do meet me at sundown in
the Temple of Osiris before the face of the God and of dead Pharaoh's
Majesty.'"

So they took Meneptah the Osirian, and wrapping him in the robes of
death, bore him to the knees of Osiris, where he should sit a day and a
night. And the messengers of Meriamun went forth summoning the women
of the city to meet her at sunset in the Temple of Osiris. Moreover,
Meriamun sent out slaves by tens and by twenties to the number of two
thousand, bidding them gather up all the wood that was in Tanis, and all
the oil and the bitumen, and bundles of reeds by hundreds such as are
used for the thatching of houses, and lay them in piles and stacks in a
certain courtyard near the Temple of Hathor. This they did, and so the
day wore on, while the women wailed about the streets because of the
death of Pharaoh.

Now it chanced that the camel of Rei the Priest fell down from