or whom he
had come to see.

Mr. Cowper received him graciously, if a little vaguely. Burton wasted
no time, however, in announcing the nature of his errand. Directly he
produced the sheets, the professor became interested. The faint odor
which seemed shaken out from them into the room stimulated his
curiosity. He sniffed at it with great content.

"Strange," he remarked, "very strange. I haven't smelt that perfume
since I was with the excavators at Chaldea. A real Oriental flavor,
young man, about your manuscript."

"There is very little of it," Burton said,--"just a page or so which
apparently the writer never had time to finish. The sheets came into my
hands in rather a curious way, and I should very much like to have an
exact translation of them. I don't even know what the language is. I
thought, perhaps, that you might be able to help me. I will explain to
you later, if you will allow me, the exact nature of my interest in
them."

Mr. Cowper took the pages into his hand with a benevolent smile. At
the first glance, however, his expression changed. It was obvious that
he was greatly interested. It was obvious, also, that he was
correspondingly surprised.

"My dear young man," he exclaimed, "my dear Mr.--Mr. Burton--why, this
is wonderful! Where did you get these sheets, do you say? Are you
honestly telling me that they were written within the last thousand
years?"

"Without a doubt," Burton replied. "They were written in London, a few
months ago."

Mr. Cowper was already busy surrounding himself with strange-looking
volumes. His face displayed the utmost enthusiasm in his task.

"It is most amazing, this," he declared, drawing a chair up to the
table. "These sheets are written in a language which has been dead as a
medium of actual intercourse for over two thousand years. You meet with
it sometimes in old Egyptian manuscripts. There was a monastery
somewhere near the excavations which I had the honor to conduct in
Syria, where an ancient prayer-book contained several prayers in this
language. Literally I cannot translate this for you; actually I will.
I can get at the sense--I can get at the sense quite well. But if one
could only find the man who wrote it! He is the man I should like to
see, Mr. Burton. If the pages were written so recently, where is the
writer?"

"He is dead," Burton replied.

Mr. Cowper sighed.

"Well, well," he continued, starting upon his task with avidity, "we
will talk about