mer on that account. A few reddish hairs,
streaked with gray, were brushed back behind his protruding ears, and
were puffed up by the high collar of his coat. His perfectly bald skull,
shining like a bone, overhung a prodigiously long nose, spongy and
bulbous at the end, so that with the blue discs of his glasses he looked
somewhat like an ibis,--a resemblance increased by his head sunk between
his shoulders. This appearance was of course entirely suitable and most
providential for one engaged in deciphering hieroglyphic inscriptions
and scrolls. He looked like a bird-headed god, such as are seen on
funeral frescoes, who had transmigrated into the body of a scholar.

The lord and the doctor were travelling towards the cliffs which
encircle the sombre valley of Biban el Moluk, the royal necropolis of
ancient Thebes, indulging in the conversation of which we have related a
part, when, rising like a Troglodyte from the black mouth of an empty
sepulchre--the ordinary habitation of the fellahs--another person,
dressed in somewhat theatrical fashion, abruptly entered on the scene,
stood before the travellers, and saluted them with the graceful salute
of the Orientals, which is at once humble, caressing, and noble.

This man was a Greek who undertook to direct excavations, who
manufactured and sold antiquities, selling new ones when the supply of
the old happened to fail. Nothing about him, however, smacked of the
vulgar exploiter of strangers. He wore a red felt fez from which hung a
long blue silk tassel; under the narrow edge of an inner linen cap
showed his temples, evidently recently shaved. His olive complexion, his
black eyebrows, his hooked nose, his eyes like those of a bird of prey,
his big moustaches, his chin almost divided into two parts by a mark
which looked very much like a sabre-cut, would have made his face that
of a brigand, had not the harshness of his features been tempered by the
assumed amenity and the servile smile of a speculator who has many
dealings with the public. He was dressed in very cleanly fashion in a
cinnamon-coloured jacket embroidered with silk of the same colour,
gaiters of the same stuff, a white vest adorned with buttons like
chamomile flowers, a broad red belt, and vast bulging trousers with
innumerable folds.

He had long since noted the boat at anchor before Luxor. Its size, the
number of the oarsmen, the luxury of the fittings, and especially the
English flag which floated from th