the temple and added to the prevailing dreariness.
It was close upon midnight, and I could not help feeling that something
terrible was about to happen. Nor was I disappointed. Even as I waited a
small procession crossed the Nile and made its way, just as the other
had done, up the avenue of kriosphinxes. Unlike the first, however, this
consisted of but four men, or to be exact, of five, since one was being
carried on a bier. Making no more noise than was necessary, they
conveyed their burden up the same well-kept roadway and approached the
temple. From where I stood I was able to catch a glimpse of the dead
man, for dead he certainly was. To my surprise he was none other than
Ptahmes. Not, however, the Ptahmes of the last vision. Now he was old
and poorly clad, and a very different creature from the man who had
walked so confidently beside Pharaoh's litter on the occasion of the
last procession.

Knowing as I did the history of his downfall, I was easily able to put
two and two together and to ascribe a reason for what I saw. He had been
in hiding to escape the wrath of Pharaoh, and now he was dead, and his
friends among the priests of Ammon were bringing him by stealth to the
temple to prepare his body for the tomb. Once more the scene vanished
and I stood in darkness. Then, as before, the light reappeared, and with
it still another picture.

On this occasion also it was night, and we were in the desert. The same
small party I had seen carrying the dead man before was now making its
way toward a range of hills. High up on a rocky spur a tomb had been
prepared, and to it the body of the man, once so powerful and now fallen
so low, was being conveyed. Unseen by the bearers, I followed and
entered the chamber of death. In front was the Chief Priest, a venerable
man, but to my surprise without his leopard skin dress. The mummy was
placed in position without ceremony of any kind. Even the most simple
funerary rites were omitted. No sorrowing relatives made an oblation
before it, no scroll of his life was read. Cut off from the world,
buried by stealth, he was left to take the long rest in an unhallowed
tomb from which my own father, three thousand years later, was destined
to remove his body. Then, like the others, this scene also vanished, and
once more I found myself standing in the dark hall.

"Thou hast seen the splendour and the degradation of the man Ptahmes,"
said the deep voice of the old man who had warned me no