-man, an ex-dragoman named Mahomet,
waiting for him and his fellaheen labourers already hired. There were
but forty of them, for his was a comparatively small venture. Three
hundred pounds was the amount that he had made up his mind to expend,
and such a sum does not go far in excavations.

During his visit of the previous year Smith had marked the place where
he meant to dig. It was in the cemetery of old Thebes, at the wild spot
not far from the temple of Medinet Habu, that is known as the Valley of
the Queens. Here, separated from the resting-places of their royal lords
by the bold mass of the intervening hill, some of the greatest ladies of
Egypt have been laid to rest, and it was their tombs that Smith desired
to investigate. As he knew well, some of these must yet remain to be
discovered. Who could say? Fortune favours the bold. It might be that he
would find the holy grave of that beauteous, unknown Royalty whose face
had haunted him for three long years!

For a whole month he dug without the slightest success. The spot that
he selected had proved, indeed, to be the mouth of a tomb. After
twenty-five days of laborious exploration it was at length cleared out,
and he stood in a rude, unfinished cave. The queen for whom it had been
designed must have died quite young and been buried elsewhere; or she
had chosen herself another sepulchre, or mayhap the rock had proved
unsuitable for sculpture.

Smith shrugged his shoulders and moved on, sinking trial pits and
trenches here and there, but still finding nothing. Two-thirds of his
time and money had been spent when at last the luck turned. One day,
towards evening, with some half-dozen of his best men he was returning
after a fruitless morning of labour, when something seemed to attract
him towards a little _wadi_, or bay, in the hillside that was filled
with tumbled rocks and sand. There were scores of such places, and this
one looked no more promising than any of the others had proved to be.
Yet it attracted him. Thoroughly dispirited, he walked past it twenty
paces or more, then turned.

"Where go you, sah?" asked his head-man, Mahomet.

He pointed to the recess in the cliff.

"No good, sah," said Mahomet. "No tomb there. Bed-rock too near top. Too
much water run in there; dead queen like keep dry!"

But Smith went on, and the others followed obediently.

He walked down the little slope of sand and boulders and examined the
cliff. It was virgin rock; never