e fore court of the temple. Both
attributed the titter, which they still could hear without being able to
detect its origin, to wandering spirits. But the mocking tones had been
heard too by the old gate-keeper, and the laughers were better known to
him than to the king's pioneer; he strode with heavy steps to the door of
the temple through the black shadow of the pylon, and striking blindly
before him called out--

"Ah! you good-for-nothing brood of Seth.

[The Typhon of the Greeks. The enemy of Osiris, of truth, good
and purity. Discord and strife in nature. Horns who fights against
him for his father Osiris, can throw him and stun him, but never
annihilate him.]

"You gallows-birds and brood of hell--I am coming."

The giggling ceased; a few youthful figures appeared in the moonlight,
the old man pursued them panting, and, after a short chase, a troop of
youths fled back through the temple gate.

The door-keeper had succeeded in catching one miscreant, a boy of
thirteen, and held him so tight by the ear that his pretty head seemed to
have grown in a horizontal direction from his shoulders.

"I will take you before the school-master, you plague-of-locusts, you
swarm of bats!" cried the old man out of breath. But the dozen of
school-boys, who had availed themselves of the opportunity to break out
of bounds, gathered coaxing round him, with words of repentance, though
every eye sparkled with delight at the fun they had had, and of which no
one could deprive them; and when the biggest of them took the old man's
chin, and promised to give him the wine which his mother was to send him
next day for the week's use, the porter let go his prisoner--who tried to
rub the pain out of his burning ear--and cried out in harsher tones than
before:

"You will pay me, will you, to let you off! Do you think I will let your
tricks pass? You little know this old man. I will complain to the Gods,
not to the school-master; and as for your wine, youngster, I will offer
it as a libation, that heaven may forgive you."

CHAPTER II.

The temple where, in the fore-court, Paaker was waiting, and where the
priest had disappeared to call the leech, was called the "House of
Seti"--[It is still standing and known as the temple of Qurnah.]--and was
one of the largest in the City of the Dead. Only that magnificent
building of the time of the deposed royal race of the reigning king's
grandfather--that temple which had been fo