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Before the door of each house stood servants bearing torches, and awaiting the long deferred return home of their masters. The gate, which gave admission to Paaker's plot of ground through the wall which surrounded it, was disproportionately, almost ostentatiously, high and decorated with various paintings.
A murmur of approbation ran round the tables, and Paaker's timidity began to diminish. He had kept the wrappings that his mother had applied round his still aching hand. "Are you wounded?" asked the Regent. "Nothing of importance," answered the pioneer. "I was helping my mother into the boat, and it happened "
Then she went up to the table, begged Paaker to sit down with her, broke her cake, and enquired for her aunt Setchern, Paaker's mother. Katuti and Paaker watched all her movements with beating hearts. Now she took up the beaker, and lifted it to her lips, but set it down again to answer Paaker's remark that she was breakfasting late.
Paaker's brow clouded, and while he paused in front of his mother he said with all the peculiar harshness of his voice: "He shall pine away in the desert, and the hyaenas of the North shall tear his unburied corpse." At these words Setchem covered her face with her veil, and clasped her hands tightly over the amulets hanging round her neck. Then she said softly: "How terrible you can be!
He raised his whip, and struck it across the shoulders of Nefert, who, with one scream of terror and anguish, fell to the ground. The lash of the whip only whistled close by the cheek of the poor fainting woman, for Bent-Anat had seized Paaker's arm with all her might. Rage, disgust, and scorn stopped her utterance; but Rameri had heard Nefert's shriek, and in two steps stood by the women.
It consisted of a gold ring with a broad signet, on which could be read the name of Thotmes III., who had long since been deified, and from whom Paaker's ancestors had derived it.
The more precious a thing is that we hope to possess, the more we are justified in complaining of him who contests our claim, and can win it from us. Paaker's blood must have been as cold as a frog's if he could have forgiven Mena instead of hating him, and the cattle he has offered to the Gods to bring down their wrath on the head of the traitor may be counted by hundreds."
Her white cat was playing at her feet with Paaker's flowers, which she had dropped on the floor, and when she saw her she took her up and kissed her. "Bring the little creature with you," said Bent-Anat. "It was your favorite plaything." "No," replied Nefert coloring.
"What shall I do?" "Put the charioteer out of the world." Paaker's gesture seemed to convey that that was a thing that had long been decided on, and he turned his face, for a good omen, so that the rising moon should be on his right hand. The dwarf went on.
Thus it happened that his best actions procured him not friends but enemies. Paaker's was, in fact, an ignoble, that is to say, a selfish nature; to shorten his road he trod down flowers as readily as he marched over the sand of the desert.
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