Paaker would have seized the opportunity of speaking, but the lady in the
chariot interposed and said:

"I am Bent-Anat, the daughter of the King, and this lady in the litter is
Nefert, the wife of the noble Mena, the charioteer of my father. We were
going in company with these gentlemen to the north-west valley of the
Necropolis to see the new works there. You know the narrow pass in the
rocks which leads up the gorge. On the way home I myself held the reins
and I had the misfortune to drive over a girl who sat by the road with a
basket full of flowers, and to hurt her--to hurt her very badly I am
afraid. The wife of Mena with her own hands bound up the child, and then
she carried her to her father's house--he is a paraschites--[One who
opened the bodies of the dead to prepare them for being embalmed.]--
Pinem is his name. I know not whether he is known to you."

"Thou hast been into his house, Princess?"

"Indeed, I was obliged, holy father," she replied, "I know of course that
I have defiled myself by crossing the threshold of these people, but--"

"But," cried the wife of Mena, raising herself in her litter, "Bent-Anat
can in a day be purified by thee or by her house-priest, while she can
hardly--or perhaps never--restore the child whole and sound again to the
unhappy father."

"Still, the den of a paraschites is above every thing unclean," said the
chamberlain Penbesa, master of the ceremonies to the princess,
interrupting the wife of Mena, "and I did not conceal my opinion when
Bent-Anat announced her intention of visiting the accursed hole in