hat was very low,
yet perfectly calm and natural.

"I am glad you have come," he said. "You are the one person whose
presence at this moment is most required. And I hope that you may yet be
in time to appease the anger of the Fire, and to bring peace again to
your household, and," he added lower still so that no one heard it but
myself, "_safety to yourself_."

And while her brother stumbled backwards, crushing a candle into the
sand in his awkwardness, the old lady crawled farther into the vaulted
chamber and slowly rose upon her feet.

At the sight of the wrapped figure of the mummy I was fully prepared to
see her scream and faint, but on the contrary, to my complete amazement,
she merely bowed her head and dropped quietly upon her knees. Then,
after a pause of more than a minute, she raised her eyes to the roof and
her lips began to mutter as in prayer. Her right hand, meanwhile, which
had been fumbling for some time at her throat suddenly came away, and
before the gaze of all of us she held it out, palm upwards, over the
grey and ancient figure outstretched below. And in it we beheld
glistening the green jasper of the stolen scarabaeus.

Her brother, leaning heavily against the wall behind, uttered a sound
that was half cry, half exclamation, but John Silence, standing directly
in front of her, merely fixed his eyes on her and pointed downwards to
the staring face below.

"Replace it," he said sternly, "where it belongs."

Miss Wragge was kneeling at the feet of the mummy when this happened. We
three men all had our eyes riveted on what followed. Only the reader who
by some remote chance may have witnessed a line of mummies, freshly laid
from their tombs upon the sand, slowly stir and bend as the heat of the
Egyptian sun warms their ancient bodies into the semblance of life, can
form any conception of the ultimate horror we experienced when the
silent figure before us moved in its grave of lead and sand. Slowly,
before our eyes, it writhed, and, with a faint rustling of the
immemorial cerements, rose up, and, through sightless and bandaged eyes,
stared across the yellow candlelight at the woman who had violated it.

I tried to move--her brother tried to move--but the sand seemed to hold
our feet. I tried to cry--her brother tried to cry--but the sand seemed
to fill our lungs and throat. We could only stare--and, even so, the
sand seemed to rise like a desert storm and cloud our vision ...

And when I manage