ght, mummies to his left, of every style
and period, till he began to feel as though he never wished to see
another dried remnant of mortality. He peeped into the room where lay
the relics of Iouiya and Touiyou, the father and mother of the great
Queen Taia. Cloths had been drawn over these, and really they looked
worse and more suggestive thus draped than in their frigid and unadorned
blackness. He came to the coffins of the priest-kings of the twentieth
dynasty, formidable painted coffins with human faces. There seemed to be
a vast number of these priest-kings, but perhaps they were better
than the gold masks of the great Ptolemaic ladies which glinted at him
through the gathering gloom.

Really, he had seen enough of the upper floors. The statues downstairs
were better than all these dead, although it was true that, according to
the Egyptian faith, every one of those statues was haunted eternally by
the _Ka_, or Double, of the person whom it represented. He descended
the great stairway. Was it fancy, or did something run across the bottom
step in front of him--an animal of some kind, followed by a swift-moving
and indefinite shadow? If so, it must have been the Museum cat hunting
a Museum mouse. Only then what on earth was that very peculiar and
unpleasant shadow?

He called, "Puss! puss! puss!" for he would have been quite glad of its
company; but there came no friendly "miau" in response. Perhaps it was
only the _Ka_ of a cat and the shadow was--oh! never mind what. The
Egyptians worshipped cats, and there were plenty of their mummies about
on the shelves. But the shadow!

Once he shouted in the hope of attracting attention, for there were no
windows to which he could climb. He did not repeat the experiment, for
it seemed as though a thousand voices were answering him from every
corner and roof of the gigantic edifice.

Well, he must face the thing out. He was shut in a museum, and the
question was in what part of it he should camp for the night. Moreover,
as it was growing rapidly dark, the problem must be solved at once. He
thought with affection of the lavatory, where, before going to see
the Director, only that afternoon he had washed his hands with the
assistance of a kindly Arab who watched the door and gracefully accepted
a piastre. But there was no Arab there now, and the door, like every
other in this confounded place, was locked. He marched on to the
entrance.

Here, opposite to each other, stood th