king in his wheezy voice, pointing up with a
yellow Assouan cane.

"That is a hippopotamus," said the dragoman; and the tourists all
tittered, for there was just a suspicion of Mr. Stuart himself in the
carving.

"But it isn't bigger than a little pig," he protested. "You see that
the King is putting his spear through it with ease."

"They make it small to show that it was a very small thing to the King,"
said the dragoman. "So you see that all the King's prisoners do not
exceed his knee--which is not because he was so much taller, but so much
more powerful. You see that he is bigger than his horse, because he is
a king and the other is only a horse. The same way, these small women
whom you see here and there are just his trivial little wives."

"Well, now!" cried Miss Adams indignantly. "If they had sculpted that
King's soul it would have needed a lens to see it. Fancy his allowing
his wives to be put in like that."

"If he did it now, Miss Adams," said the Frenchman, "he would have more
fighting than ever in Mesopotamia. But time brings revenge. Perhaps
the day will soon come when we have the picture of the big strong wife
and the trivial little husband--_hein?_"

Cecil Brown and Headingly had dropped behind, for the glib comments of
the dragoman, and the empty, light-hearted chatter of the tourists
jarred upon their sense of solemnity. They stood in silence watching
the grotesque procession, with its sun-hats and green veils, as it
passed in the vivid sunshine down the front of the old grey wall.
Above them two crested hoopoes were fluttering and calling amid the
ruins of the pylon.

"Isn't it a sacrilege?" said the Oxford man at last.

"Well, now, I'm glad you feel that about it, because it's how it always
strikes me," Headingly answered with feeling. "I'm not quite clear in
my own mind how these things should be approached--if they are to be
approached at all--but I am sure this is not the way. On the whole, I
prefer the ruins that I have not seen to those which I have."

The young diplomatist looked up with his peculiarly bright smile, which
faded away too soon into his languid, _blase_ mask.

"I've got a map," said the American, "and sometimes far away from
anything in the very midst of the waterless, trackless desert, I see
'ruins' marked upon it--or 'remains of a temple,' perhaps. For example,
the temple of Jupiter Ammon, which was one of the most considerable
shrines in the world, was h