changed the children.  That is the best news of all that has reached me on this propitious day, for the Mohar’s widow, the noble Setchem, has been brought here, and I should have been obliged to choose between two sentences on her as the mother of the villain who has escaped us.  Either I must have sent her to the quarries, or have had her beheaded before all the people—­In the name of the Gods, what is that?”

They heard a loud cry in a man’s voice, and at the same instant a noise as if some heavy mass had fallen to the ground from a great height.  Rameses and Mena hastened to the window, but started back, for they were met by a cloud of smoke.

“Call the watch!” cried the king.

“Go, you,” exclaimed Mena to Ani.  “I will not leave the king again in danger.”

Ani fled away like an escaped prisoner, but he could not get far, for, before he could descend the stairs to the lower story, they fell in before his very eyes; Katuti, after she had set fire to the interior of the palace, had made them fall by one blow of a hammer.  Ani saw her robe as she herself fled, clenched his fist with rage as he shouted her name, and then, not knowing what he did, rushed headlong through the corridor into which the different royal apartments opened.

The fearful crash of the falling stairs brought the King and Mena also out of the sleeping-room.

“There lie the stairs! that is serious!” said the king cooly; then he went back into his room, and looked out of a window to estimate the danger.  Bright flames were already bursting from the northern end of the palace, and gave the grey dawn the brightness of day; the southern wing or the pavilion was not yet on fire.  Mena observed the parapet from which Paaker had fallen to the ground, tested its strength, and found it firm enough to bear several persons.  He looked round, particularly at the wing not yet gained by the flames, and exclaimed in a loud voice: 

“The fire is intentional! it is done on purpose.  See there! a man is squatting down and pushing a brand into the woodwork.”

He leaped back into the room, which was now filling with smoke, snatched the king’s bow and quiver, which he himself had hung up at the bed-head, took careful aim, and with one cry the incendiary fell dead.

A few hours later the dwarf Nemu was found with the charioteer’s arrow through his heart.  After setting fire to Bent-Anat’s rooms, he had determined to lay a brand to the wing of the palace where, with the other princes, Uarda’s friend Rameri was sleeping.

Mena had again leaped out of window, and was estimating the height of the leap to the ground; the Pharaoh’s room was getting more and more filled with smoke, and flames began to break through the seams of the boards.  Outside the palace as well as within every one was waking up to terror and excitement.

“Fire! fire! an incendiary!  Help!  Save the king!” cried Kaschta, who rushed on, followed by a crowd of guards whom he had roused; Uarda had flown to call Bent-Anat, as she knew the way to her room.  The king had got on to the parapet outside the window with Mena, and was calling to the soldiers.