d there was not a sign of a lamp.
Not a sign of anything remaining when we came away the first time; or
on the second, except the bodies of the Arabs.'

"Whilst I was speaking, he had uncoiled some large sheets of paper
which he had brought in his hand from his own room. These he spread
out on the great table, keeping their edges down with books and
weights. I knew them at a glance; they were the careful copies which
he had made of our first transcripts from the writing in the tomb.
When he had all ready, he turned to me and said slowly:

"'Do you remember wondering, when we examined the tomb, at the lack of
one thing which is usually found in such a tomb?'

"'Yes! There was no serdab.'

"The serdab, I may perhaps explain," said Mr. Corbeck to me, "is a sort
of niche built or hewn in the wall of a tomb. Those which have as yet
been examined bear no inscriptions, and contain only effigies of the
dead for whom the tomb was made." Then he went on with his narrative:

"Trelawny, when he saw that I had caught his meaning, went on speaking
with something of his old enthusiasm:

"'I have come to the conclusion that there must be a serdab--a secret
one. We were dull not to have thought of it before. We might have
known that the maker of such a tomb--a woman, who had shown in other
ways such a sense of beauty and completeness, and who had finished
every detail with a feminine richness of elaboration--would not have
neglected such an architectural feature. Even if it had not its own
special significance in ritual, she would have had it as an adornment.
Others had had it, and she liked her own work to be complete. Depend
upon it, there was--there is--a serdab; and that in it, when it is
discovered, we shall find the lamps. Of course, had we known then what
we now know or at all events surmise, that there were lamps, we might
have suspected some hidden spot, some cachet. I am going to ask you to
go out to Egypt again; to seek the tomb; to find the serdab; and to
bring back the lamps!'"

"'And if I find there is no serdab; or if discovering it I find no
lamps in it, what then?' He smiled grimly with that saturnine smile of
his, so rarely seen for years past, as he spoke slowly:

"'Then you will have to hustle till you find them!'

"'Good!' I said. He pointed to one of the sheets.

"'Here are the transcripts from the Chapel at the south and the east.
I have been looking over the writings again; and I find that i