ee but the debris of familiar desert rubbish. But Freddy
Lampton knew otherwise. Only yesterday the most experienced of the
workmen had struck something hard, something which told him that they
had finished with loose sand and broken rocks and had struck the
ancient handiwork of man.

The site chosen had been a mere conjecture on Freddy Lampton's part, a
conjecture guided by scientific knowledge and careful research. He
felt convinced that the tomb which they were looking for was close to
the spot where they were working. Indications such as the excavator
looks for had decided him to begin work on the site. The discovery
yesterday had been nothing more or less than the first indication of a
narrow flight of steps, cut in the virgin desert rock, a stairway
probably built by the tomb-builders for the use of the workmen, in
order to carry away baskets of sand and rubbish without slipping.

The moment that the expert workman had come across this staircase, they
had suspended work until "Effendi" had been sent for and found. Under
his eye and partly by his own pickaxe, the little flight of embryo
steps, with a very steep gradient, had been laid bare. In the vast
expanse which the work covered, it seemed a very small thing, but the
greatest underground temples--for the tombs are veritable temples--of
Egypt, and some of the most wonderful of her monuments, have been
discovered by far fainter clues. The little staircase, about twenty
feet below the surface of the sand, was enough to fill the young
Englishman's heart with hope. He had come upon man's handiwork--no
doubt they would soon come upon more important masonry.

When all the workmen had saluted the Effendi with respectful salaams
and returned to their common toil, Freddy Lampton addressed the native
overseer. He was enveloped in a white woollen hooded cloak, for the
heat of the day had not yet begun; he also wore a fine turban; while
the _fellahin_ who did the roughest work wore only white skull-caps and
cotton drawers to their knees and full shirts of blue or white cotton,
open from the neck to the waist. A few of the better-paid older men
wore turbans of cheap white muslin, wrapped round brown felt
skull-caps, or fezes. The carriers of rubbish, who received the
smallest pay of any, dispensed with the drawers as well as with the
turban. In the sunlight their one garment, a blue or white shirt,
stood out against the yellow sand as they wound their way in I