first impulse was to go in, his
second one not to. Why, there might be an army inside! But by the time
the risk occurred to him he was through the portals, and he was afraid
of turning, not knowing what was behind him. So he took a pace to his
rear, still looking into the interior, and holding his rifle at the
ready.

It was by no means dark inside, though coming out of the intense glare
it seemed so at the first moment. But light came in from openings high
up, showing a chamber which would _not_ contain an army, but was of
handsome dimensions for all that, and empty. Empty to all appearance,
so far as human beings were concerned that is, but inhabited by stone
heroes of the past. There they sat, solemn and gigantic, heedless of
the lapse of ages, staring into the future with blind eyes.

The walls and the bases of the statues were covered with hieroglyphics,
which would no doubt have told all about them to officials of the
British Museum not present.

What a long time it must have taken to write a letter when you had to
draw a dog to express a dog, a man when you meant a man, and so forth.
It would be rather amusing reading, though, so far as some of my
friends, who are not good artists, are concerned. And yours? If a
fellow could draw a little bit, however, one might spend nine or ten
hours after breakfast very pleasantly in deciphering his correspondence;
though it must have been annoying, if one wanted some such matter as a
pyramid in a hurry, to have to draw a stag and a knight for "Dear Sir,"
an eye for "I," and so forth throughout the piece. And when ingenious
innovators took prominent curves and angles of these drawings to express
the things, and so invented hieroglyphics, no doubt busy men with a
large correspondence found advantage in it!

Kavanagh had little time for these reflections, for he had hardly made a
rapid inspection of this curious old temple, burying-place, or whatever
it was, before he heard a shot in the distance outside, and running to
the entrance he saw an Arab, who had doubtless been unearthed on another
side and bolted here, pausing a hundred yards off to have a return shot
at the man probably who had fired at him, and the report of whose rifle
had disturbed Kavanagh's day-dream. Of course he did not know that an
enemy was up there, or he would not have stopped for his shot.

As he was getting his sight to bear on some one below, Kavanagh was
doing the same for him, and just