leopatra.

"Nay," I answered; "follow me," and I led the way to a gallery, which
we entered through an opening in the floor of the great chamber. It had
been closed by a trap-door of stone, but the door was open. Creeping
along this shaft, or passage, for some ten paces, we came at length to a
well, seven cubits in depth. Making fast one end of the rope that I
had brought about my body and the other to a ring in the rock, I
was lowered, holding the lamp in my hand, till I stood in the last
resting-place of the Divine Menkau-ra. Then the rope was drawn up, and
Cleopatra, being made fast to it, was let down by the eunuch, and I
received her in my arms. But I bade the eunuch, sorely against his will,
since he feared to be left alone, await our return at the mouth of the
shaft. For it was not lawful that he should enter whither we went.

CHAPTER XI

OF THE TOMB OF THE DIVINE MENKAU-RA; OF THE WRITING ON THE BREAST OF
MENKAU-RA; OF THE DRAWING FORTH OF THE TREASURE; OF THE DWELLER IN THE
TOMB; AND OF THE FLIGHT OF CLEOPATRA AND HARMACHIS FROM THE HOLY PLACE

We stood within a small arched chamber, paved and lined with great
blocks of the granite stone of Syene. There before us--hewn from a
single mass of basalt shaped like a wooden house and resting on a sphinx
with a face of gold--was the sarcophagus of the Divine Menkau-ra.

We stood and gazed in awe, for the weight of the silence and the
solemnity of that holy place seemed to crush us. Above us, cubit over
cubit in its mighty measure, the pyramid towered up to heaven and was
kissed of the night air. But we were deep in the bowels of the rock
beneath its base. We were alone with the dead, whose rest we were about
to break; and no sound of the murmuring air, and no sight of life came
to dull the awful edge of solitude. I gazed on the sarcophagus; its
heavy lid had been lifted and rested at its side, and around it the dust
of ages had gathered thick.

"See," I whispered, pointing to a writing, daubed with pigment upon the
wall in the sacred symbols of ancient times.

"Read it, Harmachis," answered Cleopatra, in the same low voice; "for I
cannot."

Then I read: "I, Rameses Mi-amen, in my day and in my hour of need,
visited this sepulchre. But, though great my need and bold my heart,
I dared not face the curse of Menkau-ra. Judge, O thou who shalt come
after me, and, if thy soul is pure and Khem be utterly distressed, take
thou that which I have left."

"Where,