e than in this strait--which is the peril of spotless womanhood."

The old man rubbed his head. "Aye, I know, I know. Thy haste is
justifiable, but--"

"I can go alone. There is no need that thou shouldst waste an hour of
thy needed sleep for me. I pledge thee I shall conduct myself without
thee as I should beneath thine eye. Most reverently will I enter, most
reverently search, most reverently depart, and none need ever know I
went alone."

The ancient keeper weakened at the earnestness of the young man.

"And thou wilt permit no eye to see thee enter or come forth from the
valley?"

"Most cautious will I be--most secret and discreet."

"Canst thou open the gates?"

"I have not forgotten from the daily practice that was mine for many
weeks."

"Then go, and let no man know of this. Amen give thee success."

Kenkenes thanked him gratefully and went at once.

The moon was in its third quarter, but it was near midnight and the
valley of the Nile between the distant highlands to the east and west
was in soft light. On the eastern side of the river there was only a
feeble glimmer from a window where some chanting leech stood by a
bedside, or where a feast was still on. But under the luster of the
waning moon Thebes lost its outlines and became a city of marbles and
shadows and undefined limits.

On the western side the vision was interrupted by a lofty,
sharp-toothed range, tipped with a few scattered stars of the first
magnitude. In the plain at its base were the palaces of Amenophis III,
of Rameses II, and their temples, the temples of the Tothmes, and far
to the south the majestic colossi of Amenophis III towered up through
the silver light, the faces, in their own shadow, turned in eternal
contemplation of the sunrise. Grouped about the great edifices were
the booths of funeral stuffs and the stalls of caterers to the populace
of the Libyan suburb of Thebes. But these were hidden in the dark
shadows which the great structures threw. The moon blotted out the
profane things of the holy city and discovered only its splendors to
the sky.

At the northwest limits of the suburb, the hills approached the Nile,
leaving only a narrow strip a few hundred yards wide between their
fronts and the water. Here the steep ramparts were divided by a
tortuous cleft, which wound back with many cross-fissures deep into the
desert. The ravine was simply a chasm, with perpendicular sides of
naked rock.

At its u