“That will never be known,” said Alric quietly. “It is a secret that the King buried with his own body. There is a tale (I cannot vouch for its truth) that once upon a time, in answer to this same question, one (who was doubtless demented, or addled with wine) did say that the child became in time our great High Priest Zelas, but on the morrow this man was found lying dead and no one doubts that the wrath of Osirus overtook him! but let us leave these unsolvable speculations, and return to the Israelites. I doubt the wisdom of their retention.”
“Let me speak to your question most noble General.” It was a new voice—the voice of the youngest son of Tothmes the first, brother to the reigning King.
“We should miss the skilled labor of the Israelites. In a thousand industrial ways they pay amply for their keep.”
CHAPTER III.
Even as he speaks there is a shuffling of feet heard, and into the room led by a beautiful child—a boy of eight years old—comes a something that makes even the strong men present involuntarily shrink, as they all rise and bow low before it.
The creature is robed in white and scarlet, and on his brow there is fitted a crown of gold, glittering with diamonds, and rubies, emeralds and pearls.
His protruding, wandering eyes have a blank stare, his full, wide open, drooling lips are mumbling something, but he has a firm grasp on the child’s hand, and the child leads him.
“It is the King,” cries a sweet treble voice. “The King, my father, and we have run away from our good Miriam, for we are tired of our clay dolls, are we not, my father?”
“Are we not, my father; are we not, my father?” mumbles the idiot, and then looking into the child’s face, he falls into a fit of immoderate laughter and in the midst of it a woman enters. Although long past youth she is as slight as a girl, typically Egyptian in feature and coloring. She has about her something individual and distinctive and she is clad in a costume that is masculine in most of its make-up.