man if I had confided those suspicions to
you."

Mounted upon donkeys, the journey from Rekka to the Pyramid of Meydum
occupies fully an hour and a half, and the glories of the sunset had
merged into the violet dusk of Egypt before the party passed the
outskirts of the cultivated land and came upon the desert sands. The
mountainous pile of granite, its peculiar orange hue a ghastly yellow
in the moonlight, now assumed truly monstrous proportions, seeming
like a great square tower rising in three stages from its mound of
sand to some three hundred and fifty feet above the level of the
desert.

There is nothing more awesome in the world than to find one's self at
night, far from all fellow-men, in the shadow of one of those edifices
raised by unknown hands, by unknown means, to an unknown end; for,
despite all the wisdom of our modern inquirers, these stupendous
relics remain unsolved riddles set to posterity by a mysterious
people.

Neither Sime nor Ali Mohammed were of highly strung temperament,
neither subject to those subtle impressions which more delicate
organisations receive, as the nostrils receive an exhalation, from
such a place as this. But Dr. Cairn and his son, though each in a
different way, came now within the _aura_ of this temple of the dead
ages.

The great silence of the desert--a silence like no other in the world;
the loneliness, which must be experienced to be appreciated, of that
dry and tideless ocean; the traditions which had grown up like fungi
about this venerable building; lastly, the knowledge that it was
associated in some way with the sorcery, the unholy activity, of
Antony Ferrara, combined to chill them with a supernatural dread which
called for all their courage to combat.

"What now?" said Sime, descending from his mount.

"We must lead the donkeys up the slope," replied Dr. Cairn, "where
those blocks of granite are, and tether them there."

In silence, then, the party commenced the tedious ascent of the mound
by the narrow path to the top, until at some hundred and twenty feet
above the surrounding plain they found themselves actually under the
wall of the mighty building. The donkeys were made fast.

"Sime and I," said Dr. Cairn quietly, "will enter the pyramid."

"But--" interrupted his son.

"Apart from the fatigue of the operation," continued the doctor, "the
temperature in the lower part of the pyramid is so tremendous, and the
air so bad, that in your present state o