n."

Mr. Jellicoe shook his head. "You appear," said he, "to be confusing the
order of deposition with the order of discovery. What evidence is there
that the remains found at Sidcup were deposited before those found
elsewhere?"

"I don't know that there is any," I admitted.

"Then," said he, "I don't see how you support your suggestion that the
person started from the neighbourhood of Eltham."

On consideration, I had to admit that I had nothing to offer in support
of my theory; and having thus shot my last arrow in this very unequal
contest, I thought it time to change the subject.

"I called in at the British Museum the other day," said I, "and had a
look at Mr. Bellingham's last gift to the nation. The things are very
well shown in that central case."

"Yes. I was very pleased with the position they have given to the
exhibit, and so would my poor old friend have been. I wished, as I
looked at the case, that he could have seen it. But perhaps he may,
after all."

"I am sure I hope he will," said I, with more sincerity, perhaps, than
the lawyer gave me credit for. For the return of John Bellingham would
most effectually have cut the Gordian knot of my friend Godfrey's
difficulties. "You are a good deal interested in Egyptology yourself,
aren't you?" I added.

"Greatly interested," replied Mr. Jellicoe, with more animation than I
had thought possible in his wooden face. "It is a fascinating subject,
the study of this venerable civilisation, extending back to the
childhood of the human race, preserved for ever for our instruction in
its own unchanging monuments like a fly in a block of amber. Everything
connected with Egypt is full of an impressive solemnity. A feeling of
permanence, of stability, defying time and change, pervades it. The
place, the people, and the monuments alike breathe of eternity."

I was mightily surprised at this rhetorical outburst on the part of this
dry and taciturn lawyer. But I liked him the better for the touch of
enthusiasm that made him human, and determined to keep him astride of
his hobby.

"Yet," said I, "the people must have changed in the course of
centuries."

"Yes, that is so. The people who fought against Cambyses were not the
race that marched into Egypt five thousand years before--the dynastic
people whose portraits we see on the early monuments. In those fifty
centuries the blood of Hyksos and Syrians and Ethiopians and Hittites,
and who can say how many more race