n the landscape. In such a
way were the neglected temples of the gods saved from the ravages of
fanatics.

To Michael this provision of Nature, this preserving of the world's
earliest treasures and story, was very beautiful. It meant a great
deal more than the mere accumulation of wind-blown sands; it meant that
the Creating Hand is never still, that the making of the world is
eternal. In Michael's opinion there was no doubt but that Egypt's
priceless treasures had been designedly hidden, that the Author of
Nature had preserved them until such a time as mankind was capable of
appreciating them and guarding them. The drifting sands--ever at the
caprice of the four winds to those who have eyes to see and see
not--have saved Egypt's history, which is written in stone.

Reflecting, as was his wont, on these side-issues of the world's
evolution, he journeyed on. The breeze was stiffening, a cool,
invigorating breeze, which had cleared the sky and brought some white
clouds into it. In the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings the heavens
rarely held a cloud; in the eastern desert his travels had carried him
northwards, where the dews are heavier and the sudden changes in the
temperature less noticeable.

With the cooler atmosphere his spirits rose, his vitality quickened.
Wonderful pictures danced before his eyes, pictures which he had seen
over and over again, his first visualizing of the treasure. The vision
had never been far from his mind. He could see himself inspecting the
bars of gold which Akhnaton had hidden in the hills, and fingering the
ancient jewels while he thought once more of the story he had been told
by a member of an excavating camp in Egypt. The story reassured him:
Some native workmen, belonging to the camp, had come across a number of
terra-cotta crocks hidden under a flight of steps. They were full to
the brim of bars of pure gold. The gold had obviously been thrust into
the jars very hurriedly. The theory they suggested to experts was that
the citizens, suddenly becoming alarmed by the approach of a besieging
army, had thrust the wealth of the public treasury into the jars and
hidden them in the hollow behind the steps of a staircase in some
public building. If the Romans ever besieged the city, they had
overlooked the jars and so the gold had remained in its simple
hiding-place until the enthusiasm of modern Egyptologists discovered
it. In the jars there was sufficient gold to pay for a y