Page:Orczy--the gates of Kamt.djvu/66

 No wonder the poor creature, as it looked up, mistook Hugh Tankerville for one of its gods. He looked simply magnificent. His face, worn thin and ascetic through the privations of the past few weeks, appeared strangely impressive and ethereal; his eyes were very large and dark, and his great height and breadth of shoulders were further enhanced by the long, white burnous which draped him from head to foot. Still, I thought that it was a decidedly bold thing to do for a born Londoner to suddenly assume the personality of an Egyptian god, and to distribute mercy and pardon with a free hand on the first comer who happened to ask for it.

The poor wretch, somewhat comforted, had turned again to his loathsome meal.

"Whence comest thou?" asked Hugh.

"I was cast out from Kamt," moaned the unfortunate creature, as, evidently overcome by some terrible recollections, he threw himself down once more at our feet and repeated his piteous cry:

"Osiris! Anubis! Mercy! Pardon!"

Thus it was that from this poor dying maniac we first heard with absolute certainty that the papyrus had not lied. Evidently he, like the other unfortunate wretches whose bones littered the desert sands, had been driven out of the fertile land beyond the hills and left to become a prey to the vultures of the wilderness, and slowly to die in the midst of terrible tortures of hunger, thirst and isolation.

"They don't seem to be very pleasant people to deal with out there," I remarked, "if this is an example of their retributive justice."

Hugh looked down at the man at his feet.

"Why wast thou cast out?" he asked.

The maniac looked up, astonished, perhaps, that a