"For she did not kill her child," answered Mefres, angrily.
"Who, then?"
"He whom the servants saw when he rushed into Sarah's house and fled a moment later; he who, when going against the enemy, took with him the priestess Kama, who denied the altar; he," concluded Mefres, excitedly, "who hunted Sarah out of the house, and made her a slave because her son had been made a Jew."
"Thy words are terrible," answered Sem, in alarm.
"The criminal is still worse, and, in spite of that stupid woman's stubbornness, he will be discovered."
But the holy man did not suppose that his prophecy would be accomplished so quickly.
And it was accomplished in the following manner: Prince Ramses, when moving from Pi-Bast with the army, had not left the palace when the chief of the police learned of the murder of Sarah's child, and the flight of Kama, and this, too, that Sarah's servants saw the prince entering her house in the night time. The chief of police was a very keen person; he pondered over this question, Who could have committed the crime? and instead of inquiring on the spot, he hastened to pursue the guilty parties outside the city, and forewarned Hiram of what had happened.
While Mefres was trying to extort a confession from Sarah, the most active agents of the Pi-Bast police, and with them every Phoenician under the leadership of Hiram, were hunting the Greek Lykon and the priestess Kama.
So three nights after the prince had departed, the chief of police returned to Pi-Bast, bringing with him a large cage covered with linen, in which was some woman who screamed in heaven-piercing accents. Without lying down to sleep, the chief summoned the officer who had made the investigation, and listened to his report attentively.
At sunrise the two priests, Sem and Mefres, with the nomarch of Pi- Bast, received a most humble invitation to deign immediately, should such be their will, to come to the chief of police. In fact, all three entered at the very same moment; so the chief, bending low, implored them to tell all that they knew concerning the murder of the son of the viceroy.