“Your father lay on the ground looking as calm and peaceful as when he had spoken to me but five minutes before; but his white garments were stained with blood, and the half of a dagger stood up just over his heart. There was no time to see more. His last command was to be obeyed, and shaking off those who tried to hold me, and evading the blows aimed at me with their knives, I fled. As I rushed out through the gate I saw the troops I had sent for coming toward the house. But they were too late now; besides, some of my pursuers were close behind me, and so without a pause I took the road to the farm. I think that is all I have to tell you.” Chebron was weeping bitterly, and Amuba, who was himself deeply affected, went over to him. “Console yourself, Chebron. I know what you are feeling now, but do not blame yourself too greatly for this calamity. You know what your father said--that it was but an accident, and that it was doubtless the will of the great God that your arrow should fly as it did; and he himself declared that he believed that all this was but the result of conspiracy, and that, as we heard in the temple, there were men determined to take his life.” A few minutes later the embalmer entered bringing them food. He saw at once that Chebron had been informed of the fate that had befallen his father. “Have you heard aught of what is passing in the city?” Amuba asked him. “Yes,” Chigron answered; “naught else is talked about. Many of those concerned in the deed escaped either by the entrance before the soldiers arrived there, or over the walls; but many were seized, and are now in prison for their sacrilegious deed in raising their hand against the person of the high priest of Osiris. There were tumults in the city during the night, many maintaining that the deed was well done, others the contrary. “Those who had been taken all declared that they had been informed by one who said he knew it for certain that the cat was buried in the inclosure, and that it had been slain by you and my young lord here, as you had been seen going with your bows and arrows to the inclosure and were there for some time, after which the cat was never seen again. The general opinion is that though the prisoners taken will be punished--some with flogging, some with death--your lives are also assuredly forfeited, and that even the friendship of the king for your father would not avail to protect you, for that he, like others, must obey the law, and that the law of Egypt is that whomsoever shall take the life of a cat shall be slain.” “I am perfectly willing to die,” Chebron said; “and my greatest regret now is that I did not follow my first impulse and denounce myself as the accidental killer of the cat. No blame could have then been attached to my father or to any but myself.”