"There, there, again, look! But this time it is not a cat--it is he, Uaenra! Do you see what a face he has--worn out, old, eternal. If a man had suffered for a thousand years in hell and then came back again, he would have a face like that ... he looks at me and laughs--he knows I want to kill him but he thinks I won't dare.... But wait a bit, I'll show you!" He staggered and almost fell. They all rushed to him and would have bled him, but he had already recovered. His face was almost calm; only the corners of his mouth quivered and his lips were twisted into a smile. All of a sudden there was a frantic squealing and howling outside the window; the leaves rustled and something fell into the water with a heavy splash. They all ran to the ground floor hall which gave on to the garden and saw the cat floating on the water with its belly ripped open. "It's a bad business," Ay said. "Why!" Merira asked. "Someone has been eavesdropping." "What of it?" "What of it? Why, he will tell the king." "Let him. I know the king better than you do: he might hear with his own ears, see with his own eyes and yet not believe. He would hand the spy over to us." "Hadn't we better put it off," Tuta began timidly; the fright had given him such a stomach-ache that he could hardly stand and could not spare a thought even for his beloved Ruru. "Let's put it off! Let us!" everyone said. "Cowards, scoundrels, traitors!" Merira cried in a fury. "If you put it off, I will inform against you!" "But we are thinking of you, Merira," Ay said. "You are ill, you ought to look after yourself...." "Here is my medicine!" Merira cried, pointing to the poison ring that glittered on his finger. "It shall be as we decided: all will be over in three days' time!" III Do not judge me, O Lord, for my many sins! I am a man with no understanding of myself," Merira whispered. "What are you whispering?" Dio asked. "Nothing." He stood at the prow of the boat with a double-edged harpoon in his hands and she sat at the helm, rowing with a short oar, or pushing off in shallow places with a long pole. The flat-bottomed boat for two, made of long stems of papyrus, tied together and covered with coal tar, was so unstable that one could hardly move in it without risk of upsetting it. Merira wore the ancient hunting dress: a two-lobed apron--_shenti_ of white linen, a broad necklace of turquoise and carnelian beads, a small beard of black horsehair and a 'tiled' closely curled wig; all the rest of the body was naked. In such dress the dead, after the resurrection, hunted in the blessed fields of Ialu in the papyrus thickets of the heavenly Nile.