saying, in a tone of command, though not loud, for there
were still many persons among the graves:

"Hands off, son of Heron, unless you want me to call the watch! I have
seen your face by the light, and that is enough for this time. Now we
know each other, and we shall meet again in another place!"

With these words he vanished in the darkness, and Melissa asked, in great
alarm:

"In the name of all the gods, who was that?"

"Some rascally carpenter, or scribe, probably, who is in the service of
the night-watch as a spy. At least those sort of folks are often built
askew, as that scoundrel was," replied Alexander, lightly. But he knew
the man only too well. It was Zminis, the chief of the spies to the night
patrol; a man who was particularly inimical to Heron, and whose hatred
included the son, by whom he had been befooled and misled in more than
one wild ploy with his boon companions. This spy, whose cruelty and
cunning were universally feared, might do him a serious mischief, and he
therefore did not tell his sister, to whom the name of Zminis was well
known, who the listener was.

He cut short all further questioning by desiring her to come at once to
the mortuary hall.

"And if we do not find him there," she said, "let us go home at once; I
am so frightened."

"Yes, yes," said her brother, vaguely. "If only we could meet some one
you could join."

"No, we will keep together," replied Melissa, decisively; and simply
assenting, with a brief "All right," the painter drew her arm through
his, and they made their way through the now thinning crowd.

CHAPTER IV.

The houses of the embalmers, which earlier in the evening had shone
brightly out of the darkness, now made a less splendid display. The dust
kicked up by the crowd dimmed the few lamps and torches which had not by
this time burned out or been extinguished, and an oppressive atmosphere
of balsamic resin and spices met the brother and sister on the very
threshold. The vast hall which they now entered was one of a long row of
buildings of unburned bricks; but the Greeks insisted on some
ornamentation of the simplest structure, if it served a public purpose,
and the embalming-houses had a colonnade along their front, and their
walls were covered with stucco, painted in gaudy colors, here in the
Egyptian and there in the Greek taste. There were scenes from the
Egyptian realm of the dead, and others from the Hellenic myths; for the
painters had bee