me also, but in the end they passed on, bearing the head of my
foster-brother, for they loved not to murder little children.

After a while, the mother of the dead child returned from the
market-place, and when she found what had been done, she and her husband
would have killed Atoua the old wife, her mother, and given me up to the
soldiers of Pharaoh. But my father came in also and learned the truth,
and he caused the man and his wife to be seized by night and hidden away
in the dark places of the temple, so that none saw them more.

But I would to-day that it had been the will of the Gods that I had been
slain of the soldiers and not the innocent child.



Thereafter it was given out that the High Priest Amenemhat had taken me
to be as a son to him in the place of that Harmachis who was slain of
Pharaoh.



CHAPTER II

OF THE DISOBEDIENCE OF HARMACHIS; OF THE SLAYING OF THE LION; AND OF THE
SPEECH OF THE OLD WIFE, ATOUA

And after these things Ptolemy the Piper troubled us no more, nor did he
again send his soldiers to seek for him of whom it was prophesied that
he should be Pharaoh. For the head of the child, my foster-brother,
was brought to him by the eunuch as he sat in his palace of marble at