en the
amulets, the mirror, the blue clay statues of the Ka, and the lamp with
seven wicks were there. Only the sacred scarabaeus was missing.

"Not only has it been torn from its ancient resting-place," I heard Dr.
Silence saying in a solemn voice as he looked at Colonel Wragge with
fixed gaze, "but it has been partially unwound,"--he pointed to the
wrappings of the breast,--"and--the scarabaeus has been removed from the
throat."

The hissing, that was like the hissing of an invisible flame, had
ceased; only from time to time we heard it as though it passed backwards
and forwards in the tunnel; and we stood looking into each other's faces
without speaking.

Presently Colonel Wragge made a great effort and braced himself. I heard
the sound catch in his throat before the words actually became audible.

"My sister," he said, very low. And then there followed a long pause,
broken at length by John Silence.

"It must be replaced," he said significantly.

"I knew nothing," the soldier said, forcing himself to speak the words
he hated saying. "Absolutely nothing."

"It must be returned," repeated the other, "if it is not now too late.
For I fear--I fear--"

Colonel Wragge made a movement of assent with his head.

"It shall be," he said.

The place was still as the grave.

I do not know what it was then that made us all three turn round with so
sudden a start, for there was no sound audible to my ears, at least.

The doctor was on the point of replacing the lid over the mummy, when he
straightened up as if he had been shot.

"There's something coming," said Colonel Wragge under his breath, and
the doctor's eyes, peering down the small opening of the tunnel, showed
me the true direction.

A distant shuffling noise became distinctly audible coming from a point
about half-way down the tunnel we had so laboriously penetrated.

"It's the sand falling in," I said, though I knew it was foolish.

"No," said the Colonel calmly, in a voice that seemed to have the ring
of iron, "I've heard it for some time past. It is something alive--and
it is coming nearer."

He stared about him with a look of resolution that made his face almost
noble. The horror in his heart was overmastering, yet he stood there
prepared for anything that might come.

"There's no other way out," John Silence said.

He leaned the lid against the sand, and waited. I knew by the masklike
expression of his face, the pallor, and the steadiness of t