ong and tapering. The neck was full, the
cranium rather long, the nose aquiline, the chin firm. Imitation eyes,
brows, and lips were painted on the wrappings, and the effect thus
produced, and in the phosphorescent glare of the moonbeams, was very
weird. I was quite alone in the tent, the only other European, who had
accompanied me to Assiut, having stayed in the town by preference, and
my servants being encamped at some hundred or so yards from me on the
ground.

"Sound travels far in the desert, but the silence now was absolute, and
although I listened attentively, I could not detect the slightest
noise--man, beast, and insect were abnormally still. There was something
in the air, too, that struck me as unusual; an odd, clammy coldness that
reminded me at once of the catacombs in Paris. I had hardly, however,
conceived the resemblance, when a sob--low, gentle, but very
distinct--sent a thrill of terror through me. It was ridiculous, absurd!
It could not be, and I fought against the idea as to whence the sound
had proceeded, as something too utterly fantastic, too utterly
impossible! I tried to occupy my mind with other thoughts--the
frivolities of Cairo, the casinos of Nice; but all to no purpose; and
soon on my eager, throbbing ear there again fell that sound, that low
and gentle sob. My hair stood on end; this time there was no doubt, no
possible manner of doubt--the mummy lived! I looked at it aghast. I
strained my vision to detect any movement in its limbs, but none was
perceptible. Yet the noise had come from it, it had breathed--breathed--
and even as I hissed the word unconsciously through my clenched lips,
the bosom of the mummy rose and fell.

"A frightful terror seized me. I tried to shriek to my servants; I could
not ejaculate a syllable. I tried to close my eyelids, but they were
held open as in a vice. Again there came a sob that was immediately
succeeded by a sigh; and a tremor ran through the figure from head to
foot. One of its hands then began to move, the fingers clutched the air
convulsively, then grew rigid, then curled slowly into the palms, then
suddenly straightened. The bandages concealing them from view then fell
off, and to my agonised sight were disclosed objects that struck me as
strangely familiar. There is something about fingers, a marked
individuality, I never forget. No two persons' hands are alike. And in
these fingers, in their excessive whiteness, round knuckles, and blue
veins, i