CHAPTER VIII.

The low muttering had grown to louder tone, the wind came in mad gusts. There were vivid ribbons of fire, and great reverberating crashes of thunder.

Beside the little bed on which lay the dead child knelt Miriam, and at the foot of the couch stood the Queen and Alric. It would have been hard to tell which of the two faces (the man's or the woman's) showed the less of fear or sorrow. The ravages of pestilence, famine and fever had left them unmoved and the present visitation of death they were meeting in quiet and silence. The great General had no tears to shed for the dead King, or the dead King's little son, and the woman warrior stood dry eyed, gazing upon the fast stiffening body of the child.

To Miriam this calmness meant a pent up agony. So, forgetting her own sorrow, she strove to form words of comfort for the Queen; and as she spoke the darkness grew deeper, and the very air became, as it were shut out, so that not in breaths, but in gasps, did the stifling Egyptians strive to fill their lungs. A silence fell, a great hush came, and in its midst a man crawled into the room and stopped at the Queen's feet, then he gasped out: "Zelas, the great High Priest, bids thee, oh Queen, and thee, my Lord Alric, to hasten to him. He waits, in the secret grotto, under the Sphinx." As he uttered the last word, he fell dead. It was at this instant that an awful flood of light filled the room. In its glory one saw that Miriam, with an ecstatic smile, arose for an instant, stretched her arms upward, and fell lifeless across the body of the little Prince.

Then the storm burst, and the blessed rain fell, and the curse had been lifted. * * *

When the storm was over, Israel went out of Egypt, and Tothmes the Third (a wiser and a better man for this awful visitation) began with speed to renew, rebuild, and re-create Egypt, to a higher place among the nations of the earth.

For centuries it was believed, by the most learned, that on that fateful night, Hatsu, Alric and Zelas were carried by Osirus, into his own _kingdom_, for no mortal eye ever beheld them more, living or dead; neither did any see them depart. * * *

In Syria there dwelt, for many years, a wise man. He came from none knew whither, and as he was _great_ in _sorcery_, none dared provoke his wrath by questionings. He left naught upon his death, but a scroll on which were written characters so strange that none could find their _meaning_. So the baffled scholars of each generation bequeathed it to the next and thus the scroll was treasured through much time, until at last, one was born, who said: "I can read what is written therein," and when he read the wise men of his day laughed him to scorn, and cried out that he was mad. "To think," they said, "that the world has been treasuring this scroll for centuries, only to be rewarded with what is at best an unfinished and impossible love tale."

Here is what the scholar found written upon the parchment: