, and he
was alone and quite unarmed. Perhaps he ought to put out the light which
advertised his whereabouts. It would be wise, and yet in this particular
he rejected wisdom. After all, the light was some company.

Since sleep seemed to be out of the question, he fell back upon poor
humanity's other anodyne, work, which has the incidental advantage of
generating warmth. Seizing a shovel, he began to dig at the doorway of
the tomb, whilst the jackals howled louder than ever in astonishment.
They were not used to such a sight. For thousands of years, as the old
moon above could have told, no man, or at least no solitary man, had
dared to rob tombs at such an unnatural hour.

When Smith had been digging for about twenty minutes something tinkled
on his shovel with a noise which sounded loud in that silence.

"A stone which may come in handy for the jackals," he thought to
himself, shaking the sand slowly off the spade until it appeared. There
it was, and not large enough to be of much service. Still, he picked it
up, and rubbed it in his hands to clear off the encrusting dirt. When he
opened them he saw that it was no stone, but a bronze.

"Osiris," reflected Smith, "buried in front of the tomb to hallow the
ground. No, an Isis. No, the head of a statuette, and a jolly good
one, too--at any rate, in moonlight. Seems to have been gilded." And,
reaching out for the lamp, he held it over the object.

Another minute, and he found himself sitting at the bottom of the hole,
lamp in one hand and statuette, or rather head, in the other.

"The Queen of the Mask!" he gasped. "The same--the same! By heavens, the
very same!"

Oh, he could not be mistaken. There were the identical lips, a little
thick and pouted; the identical nostrils, curved and quivering, but a
little wide; the identical arched eyebrows and dreamy eyes set somewhat
far apart. Above all, there was the identical alluring and mysterious
smile. Only on this masterpiece of ancient art was set a whole crown of
_uraei_ surrounding the entire head. Beneath the crown and pressed back
behind the ears was a full-bottomed wig or royal head-dress, of which
the ends descended to the breasts. The statuette, that, having been
gilt, remained quite perfect and uncorroded, was broken just above the
middle, apparently by a single violent blow, for the fracture was very
clean.

At once it occurred to Smith that it had been stolen from the tomb by
a thief who thought it to be go