was decided that we should make our escape up the Nile and haunt the
ruin of Kamak and other places until the outgoing tide set in. Once
fairly on our way, it did not take long to persuade me that she was not
only gaining strength each day in body but in soul. We had been more
than a month on the Nile; a tattered palm tree here tossing in the wind
and sand; a gaunt, clay-colored camel yonder, all legs and hair;
beggars, disease, despair all around us; a land to fly from, fit place
for tombs, jackals, and famishing lions!

But she was stronger, there were roses in her face. Her glorious black
hair had not the dampness of death in it now, but was luxuriously
sensate with renewed life and health and possible happiness.

One warm sunset, as the boat lay with its prow in the yellow sand that
seemed to stretch away into infinity, she proposed that she and I should
ascend to the top of the tall ruins on a hill a little distance back
from the river, and there wait and watch and listen for the coming day.

It was a dreadful place. I had already walked a little way out, but on
seeing a shriveled black hand stretching up from the sand, I had turned
back; only to stumble over the head of a mummy which I had afterward
seen one of our servants gather up and take to his Arab camp for
firewood. Still, we had been pent up in the boat much; and then would
not she be with me?

Two Arabs were taken with us to carry a bottle of water and the rugs and
robes. The hill was steeper than it at first seemed; and the ascent
through the sand heavy. I was having an opportunity to test her strength
and endurance. I might also have an occasion to test her courage before
the break of morning, for as we entered between two towering columns of
red granite, one of the Arabs dropped on a knee and spread his hand as
wide as he could in the sand. But wide as he spread it, he could not
more than half cover the fresh foot-print of a huge lion.

The clamber to the top was steep and hard. Yet it was not nearly so
steep and hard as I could have wished it, when I reflected that very
likely before midnight a lion might pass that way.

We found that these wonderful columns of granite were coped with great
slabs of granite. These granite slabs were of astonishing breadth and
thickness. This temple, as it is called, had probably been a tomb. I
took good care to see that there was no other means of ascent to the
place where we had chosen to spend the night than t