When, half an hour later, Kenkenes entered a cross avenue leading to a great square in which the temple stood, he found the roadway filled with people, crowding about a group of disheveled women.  These were shrieking, wildly tearing their hair, beating themselves and throwing dust upon their heads.  Kenkenes immediately surmised that there was something more than the usual death-wail in this.

He touched a man near him on the shoulder.

“Who may these distracted women be?” he asked.

“The mothers of Khafra and Sigur, and their women.”

“Nay!  Are these men dead?  I knew them once.

“They are by this time.  They were to be hanged in the dungeon of the house of the governor of police at this hour,” the man answered with morbid relish in his tone.  Kenkenes looked at him in horror.

“What had they done?” he asked.  The man plunged eagerly into the narrative.

“They were tomb robbers and robbed independently of the brotherhood of thieves.[1] They refused to pay the customary tribute from their spoil to the chief of robbers, and whatsoever booty they got they kept, every jot of it.  Innumerable mummies were found rifled of their gold and gems, and although the chief of robbers and the governor of police sought and burrowed into every den in the Middle country, they could not find the missing treasure.  Then they knew that the looting was not done by any of the licensed robbers.  So all the professional thieves and all the police set themselves to seek out the lawless plunderers.”

“Humph!” interpolated Kenkenes expressively.

“Aye.  And it was not long with all these upon the scent until Khafra and Sigur were discovered coming forth from a tomb laden with spoil, and in the struggle which ensued they did murder.  But the constabulary have not found the rest of the booty, though they made great search for it and may have put the thieves to torture.  Who knows?  They do dark things in the dungeon under the house of the governor of police.”

“And so they hanged them speedily,” said Kenkenes, desirous of ending the grisly tale.

“And so they hanged them.  I could not get in to see, and these screaming mothers attracted me, so I am here.  But my neighbor’s son is a friend of the jailer, and I shall know yet how they died.”

But Kenkenes was stalking off toward the temple, his shoulders lifted high with disgust.

“O, ye inscrutable Hathors,” he exclaimed finally; “how ye have disposed the fortunes of four friends!  Two of us hanged, a third in royal favor, a fourth an—­an—­an offender against the gods.”

Presently the avenue opened into the temple square.  With reverential hand Memphis put back her dwellings and her bazaars, that profane life might not press upon the sacred precincts of her mighty gods.  Here was a vast acreage, overhung with the atmosphere of sanctity.  The grove of mysteries was there, dark with profound shadow, and silent save for a lonesome bird song or the suspirations of the wind.  The great pool in its stone basin reflected a lofty canopy of sunlit foliage, and the shaggy peristyle of palm-tree trunks.