ambres paused in dismay.

'Since I last gave an exhibition of mine art in those halls,' said
he, '('twas in old forgotten days, in Bosco's palmy time), much is
altered. OPEN SESAME!' he cried; but, curious to say, _nothing
opened_!

At that moment a dark figure crawled submissively to our feet. It was
old Pellmelli.

His instinct for 'copy' had brought him on our track, and he began--

'As our representative, I am commissioned----'

Jambres (late 'Asher') turned from him, and he fell (still making
notes) prone on his face, where we left him, as the pace was too good
to inquire.

The mage now reconnoitred carefully the vast facade of the Hall of
Egypt, and finally fixed his gaze on a perpendicular leaden column,
adorned with strange symbols, through which (for it was a rainy night)
raging torrents of water were distinctly heard flowing downwards to who
knows what abysmal and unfathomable depths?

In this weird climate it was the familiar yet dreaded _waterspout_!

Jambres, with the feline agility of a catapult of the mountain, began
to climb the perpendicular leaden channel to which he had called our
attention, and of course we had to follow him. It was perfectly
marvellous to see the ease and grace with which he skipped and hopped
up the seemingly naked face of the wall. There were places indeed where
our position was perilous enough, and it did not add to our
cheerfulness to hear the horrid roaring and gurgling of the unseen and
imprisoned waters that poured down the channel with a violence which
seemed as if they might at any moment burst their bonds. Helped,
however, by certain ledges which projected from the wall beneath square
openings filled with some transparent substance, on which ledges from
time to time we rested, we arrived at the steep crest, and paused for
repose beneath the leafy shade of the roof-tree, Jambres lightly
leading the way.

'Now,' said Jambres, 'comes the most delicate part of our journey.'

So indeed it proved, for the mage began rapidly to divest himself of
his mysterious swathings. Wrapper by wrapper he undid, cerement on
cerement, till both Leonora and I wondered when he would stop.

Stop he did, however, and, with a practised hand, shot his linen into
one long rope, which he carefully attached to an erect and smoking
pillar, perhaps of basaltic formation, perhaps an ancient altar of St.
Simeon Skylites. When all was taut, Jambres approached a slanting
slope, smooth and trans