e were
passing. It seemed like a dream or a fairy tale, instead of the solemn,
sober fact. Who would have believed that the writing on the potsherd was
not only true, but that we should live to verify its truth, and that
we two seekers should find her who was sought, patiently awaiting our
coming in the tombs of Kor? Who would have thought that in the person
of Leo this mysterious woman should, as she believed, discover the
being whom she awaited from century to century, and whose former earthly
habitation she had till this very night preserved? But so it was. In the
face of all we had seen it was difficult for us as ordinary reasoning
men any longer to doubt its truth, and therefore at last, with humble
hearts and a deep sense of the impotence of human knowledge, and the
insolence of its assumption that denies that to be possible which it has
no experience of, we laid ourselves down to sleep, leaving our fates in
the hands of that watching Providence which had thus chosen to allow us
to draw the veil of human ignorance, and reveal to us for good or evil
some glimpse of the possibilities of life.

XXII

JOB HAS A PRESENTIMENT

It was nine o'clock on the following morning when Job, who still looked
scared and frightened, came in to call me, and at the same time breathe
his gratitude at finding us alive in our beds, which it appeared was
more than he had expected. When I told him of the awful end of poor
Ustane he was even more grateful at our survival, and much shocked,
though Ustane had been no favourite of his, or he of hers, for the
matter of that. She called him "pig" in bastard Arabic, and he called
her "hussy" in good English, but these amenities were forgotten in the
face of the catastrophe that had overwhelmed her at the hands of her
Queen.

"I don't want to say anything as mayn't be agreeable, sir," said Job,
when he had finished exclaiming at my tale, "but it's my opinion that
that there _She_ is the old gentleman himself, or perhaps his wife, if
he has one, which I suppose he has, for he couldn't be so wicked all by
himself. The Witch of Endor was a fool to her, sir: bless you, she would
make no more of raising every gentleman in the Bible out of these here
beastly tombs than I should of growing cress on an old flannel. It's a
country of devils, this is, sir, and she's the master one of the lot;
and if ever we get out of it it will be more than I expect to do. I
don't see no way out of it. That witch