it out, since to sink a shaft was impracticable and so
dangerous that the local officials refused to allow it to be
attempted. The end of it was that an English bishop came up from
Cairo and consecrated the ground by special arrangement with the
Government, which of course makes it impossible that this part of
the temple should be further disturbed. After this he read the
Burial Service over my dear husband.

"So there is the end of a very terrible story which I have written
down because I do not wish to have to talk about it more than is
necessary when we meet. For, dear Mr. Quatermain, we shall meet,
as I always knew that we should--yes, even after I heard that you
were dead. You will remember that I told you so years ago in
Kendah Land and that it would happen after a great change in my
life, though what that change might be I could not say...."

This is the end of the letter except for certain suggested dates for the
visit which she took for granted I should make to Ragnall.

CHAPTER II. RAGNALL CASTLE

When I had finished reading this amazing document I lit my pipe and
set to work to think it over. The hypothetical inquirer might ask why I
thought it amazing. There was nothing odd in a dilettante Englishman of
highly cultivated mind taking to Egyptology and, being, as it chanced,
one of the richest men in the kingdom, spending a fraction of his wealth
in excavating temples. Nor was it strange that he should have happened
to die by accident when engaged in that pursuit, which I can imagine to
be very fascinating in the delightful winter climate of Egypt. He was
not the first person to be buried by a fall of sand. Why, only a little
while ago the same fate overtook a nursery-governess and the child in
her charge who were trying to dig out a martin's nest in a pit in
this very parish. Their operations brought down a huge mass of the
overhanging bank beneath which the sand-vein had been hollowed by
workmen who deserted the pit when they saw that it had become unsafe.
Next day I and my gardeners helped to recover their bodies, for their
whereabouts was not discovered until the following morning, and a sad
business it was.

Yet, taken in conjunction with the history of this couple, the whole
Ragnall affair was very strange. When but a child Lady Ragnall, then the
Hon. Miss Holmes, had been identified by the priests of a remote African
tribe as the oracle of their peculiar faith, whi