n to me.

CHAPTER III.

LEONORA'S DISCOVERY.

One wild winter night, when the sleet lashed the pane, my door suddenly
opened. I started out of a slumber, and--could I believe my eyes? can
history repeat itself?--there stood the friend of my early youth, her
eyes ablaze, a cradle in her arms. Was it all coming round again? A
moment's reflection showed me that it was _not_ my early friend, but
her daughter, Leonora.

'Leonora,' I screamed, 'don't tell me that _you_----'

'I have deciphered the inscription,' said the girl proudly, setting
down the cradle. The baby had _not_ come round.

'Oh, is _that_ all?' I replied. 'Let's have a squint at it' (in my case
no mere figure of speech).

'What do you call _that_?' said Leonora, handing me the accompanying
document.

[Illustration]

'I call it pie,' said I, using a technical term of typography. 'I can't
make head or tail of it,' I said peevishly.

'Well, pie or no pie, I love it like pie, and I've broken the crust,'
answered the girl, 'according to my interpretation, which I cannot
mistrust.'

'Why?' I asked.

'Because,' she answered; and the response seemed sufficient when mixed
with her bright smile.

'It runs thus,' she resumed with severity, 'in the only language _you_
can partially understand----

'It runs thus,' she reiterated, and I could not help saying under such
breath as I had left, 'Been running a long time now.'

She frowned and read--

'_I, Theodolite, daughter of a race that has never been run out,
did to the magician Jambres, whose skill was even as the skill of
the gods, those things which as you have not yet heard I shall now
proceed to relate to you.

'Of him, I say, was I jealous, for that he loved a maiden
inferior--Oh how inferior!--to me in charms, wit, beauty,
intellect, stature, girth, and ancestry. Therefore, being well
assured of this, I made the man into a mummy, ere ever his living
spirit had left him. What arts I used to this last purpose it boots
not, nor do I choose to tell. When I had done this thing I put him
secretly away in a fitting box, even as Set concealed Osiris. Then
came my maidens and tidied him away, as is the wont of these
accursed ones. From that hour, even until now, has no man nor woman
known where to find him, even Jambres the magician. For though the
mummifying, as thou shalt not fail to discover, was in some sort
incomplete, yet t