d tell you circumstances in your own life that you
flatter yourself are known to no one but yourself. But do not let us
talk of such things now. When I entered the room you were reading a
paper. You hold it in your hand at this moment."

"It is a translation of the inscription upon the mummy-case over
yonder," I replied, with an eagerness to change the subject that
provoked a smile in Pharos. "At his death many of his Egyptian treasures
came into my possession, this among them. For some reason or another I
had never read the translation until to-night. I suppose it must have
been my meeting with you that put the idea into my head."

"I am interested in such matters, as you know. May I, therefore, be
permitted to look at it?"

With a parade of indifference that I could easily see was assumed,
Pharos had extended his withered old hand and taken it from me before I
realised what he was doing. Having obtained it, he leaned back in his
chair, and stared at the paper as if he could not remove his eyes from
it. For some moments not a word passed his lips. Then, muttering
something to himself in a language I did not recognise, he sprang to his
feet. The quickness of the action was so different from his usual
enfeebled movements that I did not fail to notice it.

"The mummy?" he cried. "Show me the mummy!"

Before I could answer or comply with his request, he had discovered it
for himself, had crossed to it and was devouring it with his eyes.

Upward of three minutes must have elapsed before he turned to me again.
When he did so, I scarcely recognised the man. So distorted was his
countenance that I instinctively recoiled from him in horror.

"Thy father, was it, wretched man," he cried, shaking his skeleton fist
at me, while his body trembled like a leaf in the whirlwind of his
passion, "who stole this body from its resting-place? Thy father, was
it, who broke the seals the gods had placed upon the tombs of those who
were their servants? If that be so, then may the punishment decreed
against the sin of sacrilege be visited upon thee and thine for
evermore!" Then, turning to the mummy, he continued, as if partly to it
and partly to himself: "Oh, mighty Egypt! hast thou fallen so far from
thy high estate that even the bodies of thy kings and priests may no
longer rest within their tombs, but are ravished from thee to be gaped
at in alien lands? But, by Osiris, a time of punishment is coming. It is
decreed, and none shall s