“Repeat that,” exclaimed Merytra, “and I will throw you from the window-place to find out whether your sorceries can make paving-stones as soft as air.  See, Lord, what he has done to me by his accursed wizardry,” and she exhibited her two front teeth in her shaking hand.  “I say that he set the spirit of Pharaoh whom he beguiled me to do to death, in the crystal, for I saw him there wrapped in his mummy clothes, and caused dead Pharaoh to burst the crystal and stone me with its fragments.”

“Be silent, Woman,” shouted Abi, “or I will have you beaten with rods, till your feet hurt more than your mouth.  What is this about the spirit of Pharaoh, Kaku?  Is he everywhere, for know, it is of Pharaoh, the dweller in Osiris, that I came to speak to you.”

“Most exalted Ruler of the North, Son of Royal Blood, Hereditary Count who shall be King——­”

“Cease your titles, Knave,” exclaimed Abi, “and listen, for I need counsel, and if you cannot give it I will find one who can.  Just now I lay on my bed asleep, and a dreadful vision came to me.  I dreamed that I woke up, and feeling a weight on the bed beside me turned to learn what it was, and saw there the body of my brother, Pharaoh, in his death-wrappings——­”

“As I saw him in the ball,” broke in Merytra.  “Did he pelt you also, O Abi?”

“Nay, Woman, he did worse, he spoke to me.  He said—­’You, my brother, to whom I forgave all your sins, you and the woman-snake that I cherished in my bosom, and your servant, the black-souled magician, her accomplice, have done me miserably to death, and set the Queen of both the Lands, Amen’s royal child, to starve in yonder tower with the noble lady Asti, until she dies or takes you to be her husband—­you, her uncle, who seek her beauty and my throne.  Now I have a message for you from the gods, who write down these things in their eternal books against the day of judgment, when we all shall meet and plead our cause before them, Osiris the Redeemer standing on the right hand, and the Eater-up of Souls standing on the left.

“’This is the message, O Abi—­Go to the Temple of Sekhet at the dawn.  There you shall find that Royal Loveliness which you desire.  Take it to be your wife as you desire, for it shall not say you nay.  Be wedded to that Loveliness with pomp before all the eyes of Egypt, and reign by right of that Royalty, until you meet one Rames, son of Mermes, whom you also murdered, and with him a certain Beggar-man who is charged with another message for you, O Abi.  Ascend the Nile to Thebes, and lay this body of mine in the splendid tomb which I have made ready and sit in my seat, and do those things which that Royal Loveliness you have wed, commands to you, for It you shall obey.  But hasten, hasten, Abi, to hollow for yourself a grave, and let it be near to mine, for when you are dead this my Ka would come to visit you, as it does to-night.’