e stern, had led his mercantile
instinct to expect a rich traveller whose scientific curiosity might be
exploited, and who would not be satisfied with statuettes of blue or
green enamelled ware, engraved scarabaei, paper rubbings of hieroglyphic
panels, and other such trifles of Egyptian art.

He had followed the coming and going of the travellers among the ruins,
and knowing that they would not fail, after having sated their
curiosity, to cross the stream in order to visit the royal tombs, he
awaited them on his own ground, certain of fleecing them to some extent.
He looked upon the whole of this funereal realm as his own property,
and treated with scant courtesy the little subaltern jackals who
ventured to scratch in the tombs.

With the swift perception characteristic of the Greeks, no sooner had he
cast his eyes upon Lord Evandale than he quickly estimated the probable
income of his lordship and resolved not to deceive him, reasoning that
he would profit more by telling the truth than by lying. So he gave up
his intention of leading the noble Englishman through hypogea traversed
hundreds of times already, and disdained to allow him to begin
excavations in places where he knew nothing would be found; for he
himself had long since taken out and sold very dear the curiosities they
had contained.

Argyropoulos (such was the Greek's name), while exploring the portion of
the valley which had been less frequently sounded than others because
hitherto the search had never been rewarded by any find, had come to the
conclusion that in a certain spot, behind some rocks whose position
seemed to be due to chance, there certainly existed the entrance to a
passageway masked with peculiar care, which his great experience in this
kind of search had enabled him to recognise by a thousand signs
imperceptible to less clear-sighted eyes than his own, which were as
sharp and piercing as those of the vultures perched upon the entablature
of the temples. Since he had made that discovery, two years before, he
had bound himself never to walk or look in that direction lest he might
give a hint to the violators of tombs.

"Does your lordship intend to attempt excavations?" said he in a sort of
cosmopolitan dialect which those who have been in the ports of the
Levant and have had recourse to the services of the polyglot
dragomans--who end by not knowing any language--are well acquainted
with. Fortunately, both Lord Evandale and his learned c