REAPING THE WHIRLWIND.
Beyond the initial step, Aida had taken no part in Akish's crimes. When he attained the throne, she thought that his violence must cease, but his increased power only offered him more opportunities to sate his lust for wickedness. Because his honor was bound up with his queen, as well as for her innate charm, Akish had cared more for her than he did for anybody. But, steeped with satiety, he constantly sought new sensations; and, as he grew more brutish, Aida's influence with him waned. His crimes became more vicious, and he reveled in bloodshed, until the people called him monster, and prayed for a liberator.
THEY BROUGHT HER BABY BOY IN DYING UPON HIS SHIELD.
Their eyes turned naturally to the tyrant's eldest son. Ether, now grown to splendid manhood, who through his mother, had kingly blood in his veins. The old king saw with jealous eyes how the populace loved his son, and despised him, and his hate knew no bounds. He incarcerated Ether in prison, and gradually starved him to death.
His mother, who could stand no more, left the monster, and retired to her desert castle to mourn. Nimrah, her second son, fearful that his father's wrath would now fall on him, fled with a few followers to Omer at Ablom.
Not to please a paramour but to punish Aida for leaving him, Akish yielded to the importunities of one of his favorites, a vulgar, blase woman and flaunted her openly at the palace.
It is said that the reason the criminal always gets caught is because he stands out against organized society; nay, more than that, he is fighting the law of the universe, progression. As soon as a man impairs his own usefulness, or injures his fellow-men, he becomes a clog to block her advancement, and nature is going to crush him. She has no use for weaklings, but on the useful worker she will lavish power a hundredfold.
The debased debauchee had become a menace, so the immutable laws prepared to destroy him. Grief-stricken over the death of his brother, and smarting under this latest insult offered to his mother, Gilead, the third son, arose in wrath, and declared war against his father. Thousands in the kingdom, who nursed grievances, rallied to his support. So Aida saw her own flesh and blood arrayed against their father. Deep as she had drunk of the bitter draught of sorrow, she was destined yet to drain it to the dregs.