Page:Orczy--the gates of Kamt.djvu/139

 and helpless, she knelt there before her judges, defiant and, I thought, crazy, while her accuser began slowly to read the indictment.

"Kesh-ta, the low-born slave, who has neither father nor mother, nor brother nor sister, for she is the property of the most pure and great, the Princess Neit-akrit of the house of Memmoun-ra.

"The gods gave her a son, who through the kindness of the noble princess became versed in many arts, and being a skilled craftsman was much esteemed by the great Neit-akrit, of the house of Memmoun-ra.

"Yesterday, whilst Sem-no-tha knelt before the great princess, whilst she deigned to speak to her slave, Kesh-ta, his mother, crept close behind him, and slew her son with her own hand before the eyes of Neit-akrit, the young and pure princess, and then with the blood of the abject slave his murderess smeared the garments of Neit-akrit, causing her to turn sick and faint with loathing.

"Therefore I, the public accuser, do hereby demand, in the name of the people of Kamt, both freeborn and slave, that this woman, for this grievous sin she committed, be for ever cast out from the boundaries of the land; that her body be given as a prey to the carrion that dwell in the wilderness of the valley of death, so that the jackals and the vultures might consume the very soul which, abject and base, had conceived so loathsome a crime."

There was dead silence after this; I could see Hugh, with clenched hands and lips tightly set, ready at any cost to prevent the terrible and awful deed, the consequences of which we had already witnessed in the lonely desert beyond the gates of Kamt. The Pharaoh had turned positively livid; amidst his white draperies he looked more ghostlike and dead than the corpses