The scribe’s sense of direction and location was keen.  It was one of the goodly endowments of the savage and the beast which the gods had added to the powers of this man of splendid intellect.  He doubled back through the great rocks, his steps a little rapid and never hesitating, as though his destination were in full view.  Mentu followed him, silent and moodily thoughtful.  At last Hotep stopped.

Before them was a narrow aisle leading down from the summit of the hill.  It was hemmed in on each side by tumbled masses of stone.  The aisle terminated at its lower end in a long white drift of sand against a great cube.  Instinct and reason told Hotep that here had been the hiding-place of Athor, but there was no sign that human foot had ever entered the spot.  After a space of puzzlement, Hotep smiled.

“He hath made way with the sacrilege himself,” he said with relief in his voice; “I had not credited him with so much foresight.  Nay, now, if the runaway will but come home, we will forgive him.”

Mentu said nothing.  Indeed, since Hotep had told him of the recent doings of Kenkenes, the murket had had little to say.  He had felt in his lifetime most of the sorrows that can overtake a man of his position and attainments—­but he had never known the chagrin of a wayward child.  The fear that he was to know that humiliation, now, made his heart heavy beyond words.

As they turned away the sound of voices smote upon their ears.

“Near this spot, it must be, my Lord,” one said.

“Find the sacrilege, lout.  We seek not the neighborhood of it.”

Hotep caught the murket’s arm and drew him out of the aisle into hiding behind another great stone.

“This is the place; this is the place,” the first voice declared, and his statement was seconded by another and as positive a voice.

There was the sound of the new-comers emerging into the aisle, and immediately the first speaker exclaimed in a tone full of astonishment and disappointment: 

“O, aye; I see!” the master assented with an irritating laugh.

“Har-hat!” Hotep whispered.

Another of the party broke in impatiently:  “Make an end to this chase.  Saw you any sacrilege, or was it a phantom of your stupid dreams?”

“Asar-Mut,” Mentu said under his breath.

The first voice and its second protested in chorus.

“As the gods hear me, I saw it!” the first went on.  “It was a statue most sacrilegiously wrought and the man stood before it.  It was cunningly hidden between two walls, and there is no spot on the desert that looks so much like the place as this.  And yet, no wall—­no statue—­no sign of—­”

“How did you find it yesterday?” the fan-bearer asked.

“We followed the hag, and she, the girl.  The pair of them were in sight of each other, as they ran.”

“How did they find it?”

“Magic!  Magic!”