atched, it was almost necessary to persuade myself forcibly
that I was only standing upright with difficulty in this little
sand-hole of a modern garden in the south of England, for it seemed to
me that I stood, as in vision, at the entrance of some vast rock-hewn
Temple far, far down the river of Time. The illusion was powerful, and
persisted. Granite columns, that rose to heaven, piled themselves about
me, majestically uprearing, and a roof like the sky itself spread above
a line of colossal figures that moved in shadowy procession along
endless and stupendous aisles. This huge and splendid fantasy, borne I
knew not whence, possessed me so vividly that I was actually obliged to
concentrate my attention upon the small stooping figure of the doctor,
as he groped about the walls, in order to keep the eye of imagination on
the scene before me.

But the limited space rendered a long search out of the question, and
his footsteps, instead of shuffling through loose sand, presently struck
something of a different quality that gave forth a hollow and resounding
echo. He stooped to examine more closely.

He was standing exactly in the centre of the little chamber when this
happened, and he at once began scraping away the sand with his feet. In
less than a minute a smooth surface became visible--the surface of a
wooden covering. The next thing I saw was that he had raised it and was
peering down into a space below. Instantly, a strong odour of nitre and
bitumen, mingled with the strange perfume of unknown and powdered
aromatics, rose up from the uncovered space and filled the vault,
stinging the throat and making the eyes water and smart.

"The mummy!" whispered Dr. Silence, looking up into our faces over his
candle; and as he said the word I felt the soldier lurch against me, and
heard his breathing in my very ear.

"The mummy!" he repeated under his breath, as we pressed forward to
look.

It is difficult to say exactly why the sight should have stirred in me
so prodigious an emotion of wonder and veneration, for I have had not a
little to do with mummies, have unwound scores of them, and even
experimented magically with not a few. But there was something in the
sight of that grey and silent figure, lying in its modern box of lead
and wood at the bottom of this sandy grave, swathed in the bandages of
centuries and wrapped in the perfumed linen that the priests of Egypt
had prayed over with their mighty enchantments thousan