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As soon as the black slave had satisfied himself that Pentaur was the priest whom he had seen fighting in front of the paraschites' hovel, and not the ghost of his dead master, he endeavored to slip past Paaker's brother, but Horus observed the manoeuvre, and seized him by his woolly hair.
"Do you know the dwelling of Pinem the paraschites?" asked Paaker. "What do you want with him?" "That is no concern of yours," retorted Paaker. "Lout!" exclaimed the captain, "left face and forwards, my men." "Halt!" cried Paaker in a rage. "I am the king's chief pioneer." "Then you will all the more easily find the way back by which you came. March."
Since his return home from the embalming house, the paraschites had taken no nourishment, and had not answered a word to the anxious questions of the two frightened women. He stared blindly, muttered a few unintelligible words, and often clasped his forehead in his hand.
Paaker remained alone with his two slaves; the commission with which the princess had charged him greatly displeased him. So long as the moonlight enabled him to distinguish the litter of Mena's wife, he gazed after it; then he endeavored to recollect the position of the hut of the paraschites. The captain of the watch still stood with the guard at the gate of the temple.
This guild was highly respected, even the taricheutes, who were entrusted with the actual work of embalming, could venture to mix with the other citizens, although in Thebes itself people always avoided them with a certain horror; only the paraschites, whose duty it was to open the body, bore the whole curse of uncleanness.
Rameri asked Nefert: What can have come to my sister? she seems quite strange to me; and you too are not the same as you used to be." "We both have to find our way in new circumstances." "What are they?" "That I cannot explain to you! but it appears to me that you soon may experience something of the same kind. Rumeri, do not go again to the paraschites."
"When I saw that accursed villain there with his hand in the girl's hair, I heard and saw nothing, I " "You did right," interrupted Nebsecht. "But where will all this end?" At this moment a flourish of trumpets rang through the little valley. The officer sent by Ameni to apprehend the paraschites came up with his soldiers.
Look here " and he lifted the cloth from the girl's bosom, and showed her the deep red wound, "Look here here is the first rose you laid on my grandchild's bosom, and the second there it goes." The paraschites raised his arm to fling the flower through the door of his hut. But Pentaur had approached him, and with a grasp of iron held the old man's hand.
"Good-by; I am charged to look into the tomb of our house, and see whether the offerings for the dead are regularly set out; to pour out fresh essences and have various things renewed. When Sechet has ceased to rage, and it is cooler, I shall come by here again, for I should like to call on the paraschites, and see how the poor child is."
He had indeed become a riddle to himself; for how was it that he the gardener's son, brought up in the peaceful temple of Seti ever since that night by the house of the paraschites had had such a perpetual craving for conflict and struggle?
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