foul traitor Paaker is the gardener's son. A witch in the Necropolis
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