oy."

"It's unending work and extraordinarily far-reaching, as it's done
to-day. In the early days the horrors that were committed in the way
of excavating were too awful."

"You work like detectives now, it seems to me, following up the
smallest threads and links."

"That's it," Freddy said. "We are just a body of intellectual
detectives, running to earth the history of Egypt and the story of the
ancient world. We're really far more interested in finding connecting
links and establishing disputed facts, than in unearthing statues and
figures which please the public. Egyptologists have unearthed the
private lives of Egypt's kings and queens."

"I suppose your friend Mike only enters into the artistic side of it?"

"Not altogether--he's awfully keen about Egyptian history and
mythology, but he hates detail too much to give his mind and time to
all the hard grind of the thing--he likes to study the history we
unearth."

"I'm afraid I shall be like him. I want to enjoy the results without
the dull labour of digging."

"It's a sort of thing that's born in you, I think."

"You love it, Freddy?"

"Rather! I couldn't stick any other work now."

"You're looking awfully well."

"Never felt fitter."

"The skulls and mummies under your bed haven't done you any harm. Poor
aunt Anna, how she dreads them! She always imagines that everything
Egyptian has the most malign powers. She's sure some mummy will take
its revenge on you for disturbing it."

"Poor old Anna! I suppose she thinks we are the first people who ever
thought of disturbing these tombs! She little knows how rare a thing
it is to come across one which was not robbed thousands of years ago of
all that was worth having. If Egyptian amulets and mummies had such
terrible powers, you may be very sure that the modern Arabs, who are
the most superstitious people in the world, would not touch the work,
and the ancient sextons or guardians of the tombs, who were even more
superstitious, wouldn't have dared to disturb the last slumber of a
lately-buried Pharaoh. They plundered and sacked the tomb just as soon
as ever they could. The tombs were first built up in this valley with
the hopes of hiding them; they were built here to get away from the
wretches who plundered the cemeteries on the plains. I suppose the
Pharaohs who were having their tombs built hadn't discovered that the
other tombs had been robbed by the very guardians who were set to watch