Pentaur, as he quitted the tent where the dead man lay, met the high-
priest Ameni, who had gone to seek him by his friend's bed-side, and they
returned together to gaze on the dead. Ameni, with much emotion, put up
a few earnest prayers for the salvation of his soul, and then requested
Pentaur to follow him without delay to his tent. On the way he prepared
the poet, with the polite delicacy which was peculiar to him, for a
meeting which might be more painful than joyful to him, and must in any
case bring him many hours of anxiety and agitation.

The judges in Thebes, who had been compelled to sentence the lady
Setchem, as the mother of a traitor, to banishment to the mines had,
without any demand on her part, granted leave to the noble and most
respectable matron to go under an escort of guards to meet the king on
his return into Egypt, in order to petition for mercy for herself, but
not, as it was expressly added--for Paaker; and she had set out, but with
the secret resolution to obtain the king's grace not for herself but for
her son.

[Agatharchides, in Diodorus III. 12, says that in many cases not
only the criminal but his relations also were condemned to labor in
the mines. In the convention signed between Rameses and the Cheta
king it is expressly provided that the deserter restored to Egypt
shall go unpunished, that no injury shall be done "to his house, his
wife or his children, nor shall his mother be put to death."]

Ameni had already left Thebes for the north when this sentence was
pronounced, or he would have reversed it by declaring the true origin of
Paaker; for after he had given up his participation in the Regent's
conspiracy, he no longer had any motive for keeping old Hekt's secret.