smothered by the shouts of the advancing multitude.

The courtyard was now lighted, but each individual was so engrossed by
his own sorrows that no one noticed the old astrologer. Tearing the
cloak from his shivering limbs to make a pillow for the lad's tossing
head, he heard, while tending him with fatherly affection, fierce
imprecations on the Hebrews who had brought this woe on Pharaoh and his
people, mingling with the chants and shouts of the approaching crowd and,
recurring again and again, the name of Prince Rameses, the heir to the
throne, while the tone in which it was uttered, the formulas of
lamentation associated with it, announced the tidings that the eyes of
the monarch's first-born son were closed in death.

The astrologer gazed at his grandson's wan features with increasing
anxiety, and even while the wailing for the prince rose louder and louder
a slight touch of gratification stirred his soul at the thought of the
impartial justice Death metes out alike to the sovereign on his throne
and the beggar by the roadside. He now realized what had brought the
noisy multitude to the temple!

With as much swiftness as his aged limbs would permit, he hastened
forward to meet the mourners; but ere he reached them he saw the gate-
keeper and his wife come out of their house, carrying between them on a
mat the dead body of a boy. The husband held one end, his fragile little
wife the other, and the gigantic warder was forced to stoop low to keep
the rigid form in a horizontal position and not let it slip toward the
woman. Three children, preceded by a little girl carrying a lantern,
closed the mournful procession.

Perhaps no one would have noticed the group, had not the gate-keeper's