prostrate woman. She turned her face upwards to Hugh; the ashen shade over it was unmistakable; it was that of the dying, but in her eyes, as she looked at him, there came, as a last flicker of life, a spark of the deepest, the most touching, gratitude.
Then softly at first, but gradually more and more distinctly, the whisper was passed round:
"She is dead!"
And in the moonlight all of us there could see on the woman's dress a fast-spreading, large stain of blood.
"He who sheddeth the blood of man," came in thundering accents from the high priest, "his blood shall be shed. People of Kamt, who stand here before the face of Isis, I command ye to tell me whose hand spilt the blood of that woman."
"Mine," said Hugh, quietly, throwing his knife far from him, which fell, with weird and metallic jingle, upon the granite floor. "The hand of him whom Ra, has sent among you all, the hand of him whom Osiris loveth, who has come to rule over you, bringing you a message from the foot of the throne of your god. Touch him, any of you, if you dare!"
Shuddering, awestruck, all gazed upon him, while I, blindly, impetuously, rushed to his side, to be near him, to ward off the blow which I felt convinced would fall upon his daring head, or share it with him if I were powerless to save. I don't think that I ever admired him so much as I did then—I who had often seen him recoil with horror at thought of killing a beast, who understood the extraordinary, almost superhuman sacrifice it must have cost him, to free with his own hand this wretched woman from her awful doom.
But with all his enthusiasm, scientific visionary as he was, Hugh Tankerville knew human nature well, knew that, awestruck with their own superstition, they no
