which had just now stood before us; Khefaran's face was still impassive.
Then the judges said solemnly:
"Take the gag off the woman's mouth; it is her turn to speak now."
I heaved a sigh of relief. There was a great sense of fairness in this proceeding, which, for the moment, relieved the tension on my overwrought nerves. I saw that Hugh, too, was prepared to wait and listen to what the woman would have to say.
The gag had been removed, and yet Kesh-ta did not speak; it seemed as if she had ceased to be conscious of her surroundings.
"Woman, thou hast heard the accusation pronounced against thee: what hast thou to say?"
She looked at the judges, and at the crowd of men, on whose faces she could see nothing but loathing and horror, then suddenly her wild and wandering gaze rested upon Hugh, and with a loud shriek she wrenched her arms from out her bonds, and stretched them towards him, crying:
"Thou, beloved of the gods, hear me! I ask for no pardon, no mercy! Remember death, however horrible, is life to me; the arid wilderness, wherein the gods do not dwell, where bones of evil-doers lie rotting beneath the sun, will be to me an abode of bliss, for inaccessible mountains will lie between me and her. There, before grim and slowly-creeping death overtakes me, I shall have time to rejoice that I, with my own hands, saved Sem-no-tha, my son, my beloved, from the same terrible doom. He was a slave, abject at her feet, but he was tall and handsome, and she smiled on him. And dost know what happens when Neit-akrit smiles upon a man, be he freeborn or be he slave? He loses his senses, he becomes intoxicated, a coward and a perjurer, and his
