cider mill, water the stock, gather the
eggs and feed the pigs and chickens.

The boy had the habit of coming to the springhouse and taking a nap each
day on the milk crock bench, which had been discarded since we had
bought our new refrigerator. Every warm summer afternoon about three
o'clock, he would run down the path, dodge behind a tree out of sight,
if his mother happened to step out of the kitchen door, and slipping
into the springhouse, lie down and sleep quietly in its cool moist shade
for a quarter of an hour; then, still asleep, sit up and in a startled
way, talk earnestly for some time, his features transformed by a look of
tragic intelligence, which they did not possess at other times. Then he
would lie down again and after a few minutes quiet sleep, awake and
return to the cabin.

His speech did not disturb me; his voice was low, though tense, and his
words unintelligible. Gradually his murmurings became a familiar sound,
as the call of the lark from the pasture gatepost.

Finally I noticed that he spoke in an apparently strange tongue and even
mentioned time and again names given in my ancient atlas. Many times he
used the words, pehu, Kami, Theni, horshesu, hik, nut, tash, hesoph, and
un.

I wrote Professor Fales of Danville about this time, sending him a small
box of crinoids, and casually mentioned the boy and his strange habit,
writing out the above list of words, with others, that he habitually
repeated.

He wrote back that the words were Egyptian or a kindred Hamite tongue.
Consulting the college library, he had discovered that the ancient
Egyptian name for Atlantis was Kami. That Theni was the name of a very
ancient prehistoric city, its location unknown. That pehu meant an
overflowed land; un, uncultivated land; and the word tash, tribe; the
others he was unable to translate.

He suggested that I find out from the boy's mother where she or her
people were from; get a stenographer at Winchester to come out and make
careful notes of his murmurings; and when made send a copy to him and
one to----, a lawyer at Covington, who was an antiquarian and an
Egyptologist.

The next day after the receipt of the letter I went to Winchester and
inquired at the court-house for the official stenographer. I learned, as
all courts in the district were adjourned for the summer, he had gone
to Atlantic City for the month. So I went to Judge Buckner's office and
borrowed his stenographer.

The Judge said the