sked Martina.

"To the figures of stone," I answered.

So she led me through fields in which the corn was growing, to the edge
of the desert, meeting no man all the way. Then for a mile or more we
tramped through sand, till at length, late at night, Martina halted.

"We stand beneath the statues," she said, "and they are awesome to look
on; mighty, seated kings, higher than a tall tree."

"What lies behind them?" I asked.

"The ruins of a great temple."

"Lead me to that temple."

So we passed through a gateway into a court, and there we halted.

"Now tell me what you see," I said.

"We stand in what has been a hall of many columns," she answered, "but
the most of them are broken. At our feet is a pool in which there is
a little water. Before us lies the plain on which the statues sit,
stretching some miles to the Nile, that is fringed with palms. Across
the broad Nile are the ruins of old Thebes. Behind us are more ruins and
a line of rugged hills of stone, and in them, a little to the north,
the mouth of a valley. The scene is very beautiful beneath the moon, but
very sad and desolate."

"It is the place that I saw in my dream many years ago at Aar," I said.

"It may be," she answered, "but if so it must have changed, since, save
for a jackal creeping among the columns and a dog that barks in some
distant village, I neither see nor hear a living thing. What now, Olaf?"

"Now we will eat and sleep," I said. "Perhaps light will come to us in
our sleep."

So we ate of the food we had brought with us, and afterwards lay down to
rest in a little chamber, painted round with gods, that Martina found in
the ruins of the temple.

During that night no dreams came to me, nor did anything happen to
disturb us, even in this old temple, of which the very paving-stones
were worn through by the feet of the dead.

Before the dawn Martina led me back to the colossal statues, and we
waited there, hoping that we should hear them sing, as tradition said
they did when the sun rose. Yet the sun came up as it had done from the
beginning of the world, and struck upon those giant effigies as it had
done for some two thousand years, or so I was told, and they remained
quite silent. I do not think that ever I grieved more over my blindness
than on this day, when I must depend upon Martina to tell me of the
glory of that sunrise over the Egyptian desert and those mighty ruins
reared by the hands of forgotten men.

Well, the su