ying act to word,
the Egyptian slid down and lay prostrate at the altar's foot. "He was
dead and cold!" he added; and gave way to a shuddering outburst of
grief.

Balder's nerves were a little staggered at this tale with its
heightening of dramatic action and morbid circumstance; and he was
silent until the actor (if such he were) was in some degree
repossessed of himself. Then he asked,--

"What of the child?"

"I have named her Gnulemah. She played about the dead body, bright and
careless as the flame of the lamp. Whence she came she could not
tell, nor had I seen her before that day. It seemed that, at the
moment my master's life burned out, hers flamed up; and since that day
it has lighted and warmed my solitude."

"And Doctor Glyphic--"

"I embalmed him!" cried Manetho, clasping his hands in grotesque
enthusiasm. "It was my privilege and my consolation to render his body
immortal. In my grief I rejoiced at the opportunity of manifesting my
devotion. Not the proudest of the Pharaohs was more sumptuously
preserved than he! In that labor of love there was no cunning secret
of the art that I did not employ. Night and day I worked alone; and
while he lay in the long nitre bath, I watched or slept beside him.
Then I enwound him thousand-fold in finest linen smeared with fragrant
gum, and hid his beloved form in the coffin he had chosen long
before."

"Did my uncle choose this form of burial?"

"He lived in hopes of it! It was his wish that his body might be
disposed as became his name, and the passion that had ruled his life.
Me only did he deem worthy of the task, and equal to it. Had I died
before him, his fairest hope would have been blighted, his life a
failure!"

"A dead failure, truly!" muttered Balder, impelled by the very
grewsomeness of the subject to jest about it. "Was his loftiest
aspiration to mummy and be mummied?--But yours was a dangerous office
to fulfil, Cousin Manetho. Had the death got abroad, you might have
been suspected of foul play!"

"The cause was worth the risk," replied the other, sententiously.

Helwyse shot a keen look at his companion, but could discern in him
none of the common symptoms of guilt. The priest, however, was a mine
of sunless riddles, one lode connecting with another; it was idle
attempting to explore them all at once. So the young man recurred to
that vein which was of most immediate interest to himself.

"Have you no knowledge concerns Gnulemah's origin?" he