for I don't
think I could face that road again except by daylight. It's weak, I
know, but I can't help it."

Peterson looked at his visitor with a very questioning eye.

"Of course you shall sleep here if you wish. I'll tell Mrs. Burney to
make up the spare bed. Where are you off to now?"

"Come up with me to the window that overlooks the door. I want you to
see what I have seen."

They went up to the window of the upper hall whence they could look down
upon the approach to the house. The drive and the fields on either side
lay quiet and still, bathed in the peaceful moonlight.

"Well, really, Smith," remarked Peterson, "it is well that I know you to
be an abstemious man. What in the world can have frightened you?"

"I'll tell you presently. But where can it have gone? Ah, now, look,
look! See the curve of the road just beyond your gate."

"Yes, I see; you needn't pinch my arm off. I saw some one pass. I should
say a man, rather thin, apparently, and tall, very tall. But what of
him? And what of yourself? You are still shaking like an aspen leaf."

"I have been within hand-grip of the devil, that's all. But come down to
your study, and I shall tell you the whole story."

He did so. Under the cheery lamp-light, with a glass of wine on the
table beside him, and the portly form and florid face of his friend in
front, he narrated, in their order, all the events, great and small,
which had formed so singular a chain, from the night on which he had
found Bellingham fainting in front of the mummy case until this horrid
experience of an hour ago.

"There now," he said as he concluded, "that's the whole black business.
It is monstrous and incredible, but it is true."

Doctor Plumptree Peterson sat for some time in silence with a very
puzzled expression upon his face.

"I never heard of such a thing in my life, never!" he said at last. "You
have told me the facts. Now tell me your inferences."

"You can draw your own."

"But I should like to hear yours. You have thought over the matter, and
I have not."

"Well, it must be a little vague in detail, but the main points seem to
me to be clear enough. This fellow Bellingham, in his Eastern studies,
has got hold of some infernal secret by which a mummy--or possibly only
this particular mummy--can be temporarily brought to life. He was trying
this disgusting business on the night when he fainted. No doubt the
sight of the creature moving had shaken his nerve, even th