amber from that time to this very day. Stay, I will
look," and, kneeling down, he groped about with his long arm in the
recess under the stone bench. Presently his face brightened, and with an
exclamation he pulled something forth which was caked in dust; which he
shook on to the floor. It was covered with the remains of a rotting rag,
which he undid, and revealed to my astonished gaze a beautifully shaped
and almost white woman's foot, looking as fresh and firm as though it
had but now been placed there.

"Thou seest, my son, the Baboon," he said, in a sad voice, "I spake the
truth to thee, for here is yet one foot remaining. Take it, my son, and
gaze upon it."

I took this cold fragment of mortality in my hand and looked at it in
the light of the lamp with feelings which I cannot describe, so mixed
up were they between astonishment, fear, and fascination. It was light,
much lighter I should say than it had been in the living state, and the
flesh to all appearance was still flesh, though about it there clung a
faintly aromatic odour. For the rest it was not shrunk or shrivelled, or
even black and unsightly, like the flesh of Egyptian mummies, but plump
and fair, and, except where it had been slightly burnt, perfect as on
the day of death--a very triumph of embalming.

Poor little foot! I set it down upon the stone bench where it had lain
for so many thousand years, and wondered whose was the beauty that
it had upborne through the pomp and pageantry of a forgotten
civilisation--first as a merry child's, then as a blushing maid's, and
lastly as a perfect woman's. Through what halls of Life had its soft
step echoed, and in the end, with what courage had it trodden down the
dusty ways of Death! To whose side had it stolen in the hush of night
when the black slave slept upon the marble floor, and who had listened
for its stealing? Shapely little foot! Well might it have been set upon
the proud neck of a conqueror bent at last to woman's beauty, and
well might the lips of nobles and of kings have been pressed upon its
jewelled whiteness.

I wrapped up this relic of the past in the remnants of the old linen rag
which had evidently formed a portion of its owner's grave-clothes, for
it was partially burnt, and put it away in my Gladstone bag--a strange
combination, I thought. Then with Billali's help I staggered off to see
Leo. I found him dreadfully bruised, worse even than myself, perhaps
owing to the excessive whiteness