Page:Orczy--the gates of Kamt.djvu/138

 "Answer! Who and what art thou?"

"I am Kesh-ta," replied the woman, with surly defiance, "and I am a slave of Princess Neit-akrit." "Why art thou here?"

"Because I hate her," she half hissed, half shouted, as she turned her ghastly wounded face to the moonlight, as if to bear witness to the evil passion in her heart.

"Take care, woman," warned the judges, "lest thy sacrilegious tongue bring upon thee judgment more terrible than thou hast hitherto deserved."

She laughed a strange, weird, maniacal laugh, and said:

"That cannot be, oh, learned and wisest of the judges of Kamt. Dost think perchance that thy mind can conceive or thy cruelty devise a more horrible punishment than that which I endured yesterday, when my avenging hands tried to reach her evil form and failed, for want of strength and power?"

"Be silent! and hear from the lips of thy accusers the history of the heinous sin which thou didst commit yesterday, and for which the high priest of Ra will anon deliver judgment upon thee."

"Nay! I will not be silent, and I will not hear! I will tell thee and the holy Pharaoh, and him who has come from heaven to live amongst the people of Kamt, I will tell them all of my sin. Let them hate and loathe me, let them punish me if they will; the Pharaoh is mighty and the gods are great, but all the powers of heaven and the might of the throne cannot inflict more suffering on Kesh-ta than she has already endured."

"Be silent!" again thundered the judges; and at a sign from them the two men quickly wound a cloth round the unfortunate woman's mouth and a few yards of rope round her body. Thus forcibly silent, pinioned