me bushes, and they found themselves gazing
across heap upon heap of loose fragments of very pure white stone that
was not unlike marble, and the cause of whose overthrow had most likely
been the strong growth of the abundant trees, for the roots had
interlaced and undermined them till they were completely forced out of
place. Beyond this chaos, that lay nearly buried in greenery, rose up
one above the other what seemed to Lawrence at the first glance to be
the ruins of a huge flight of steps built in a semicircular form, but
which he recognised at once, from pictures which he had seen, as an
amphitheatre.

There was no mistaking it. The steps, as he had thought them to be,
were the seats of stone rising tier above tier, now broken, mouldering,
and dislodged in many places, but in others curiously perfect.

Where they, the travellers, stood must have been occupied by the actors,
far back in the past perhaps a couple of thousand years ago; and these
remains were all that was left to tell of the greatness of the people
who once ruled in the land--great indeed, since they left such relics as
these.

Mr Burne said "Humph!" sat down, and lit a cigar, while their host
rested upon a stone at a short distance, to admire the scarlet and
yellow turban. Yussuf followed the professor, whose eyes flashed with
pleasure, while the old lawyer muttered derisively:

"Come all the way, to see a place like this! Why, I could have taken
him to the end of Holborn in a cab, and shown him the ruins of Temple
Bar all neatly numbered and piled-up, without all these pains."

The professor did not hear his remark, for he was too intent upon his
examination of the carefully built place, which he was ready to
pronounce of Greek workmanship; but there was no one but Yussuf to hear.
For Lawrence had noted that, where the stones lay baking in the sun,
innumerable lizards were glancing about, their grey and sometimes green
armoured skins glistening in the brilliant sunshine, and sending off
flashes every time they moved. Some were of a brownish hue clouded with
pale yellow; and as they darted in and out of the crevices and holes
among the stonework, they raised their heads on the look-out for danger,
or to catch some heedless fly before darting again beneath the levelled
stones or amongst the grass and clinging plants which were covering them
here and there.

Poisonous or not poisonous? that was the question Lawrence asked himself
as he crep