g, entered the
doorway.

A little way down the passage was a niche in which stood three lamps
ready lighted. One of these she took and gave the others to us. Then we
followed her down a steep incline of many steps, till at length we
found ourselves in a hot and enormous hall hewn from the living rock and
filled with blackness.

"What is this place?" said Bes, who looked frightened, and although he
spoke in a low whisper, our guide overheard him and turning, answered,

"This is the burial place of the Apis bulls. See, here lies the last,
not yet closed in," and holding up her lamp she revealed a mighty
sarcophagus of black granite set in a niche of the mausoleum.

"So they make mummies of bulls as well as of men," groaned Bes. "Oh!
what a land. But when I have seen the holy Tanofir it was in a brick
cell beneath the sky."

"Doubtless that was at night, O Bes," answered Karema, "for in such a
house he sleeps, spending his days in the Apis tomb, because of all the
evil that is worked beneath the sun."

"Hump," said Bes, "I should have thought that more was worked beneath
the moon, but doubtless the holy Tanofir knows better, or being asleep
does not mind."

Now in front of each of the walled-up niches was a little chapel, and at
the fourth of these whence a light came, the maiden stopped, saying,

"Enter. Here dwells the holy Tanofir. He tended this god during its
life-days in his youth, and now that the god is dead he prays above its
bones."

"Prays to the bones of a dead bull in the dark! Well, give me a live
grasshopper in the light; he is more cheerful," muttered Bes.

"O Dwarf," cried a deep and resounding voice from within the chapel,
"talk no more of things you do not understand. I do not pray to the
bones of a dead bull, as you in your ignorance suppose. I pray to the
spirit whereof this sacred beast was but one of the fleshly symbols,
which in this haunted place you will do well not to offend."

Then for once I saw Bes grow afraid, for his great jaw dropped and he
trembled.

"Master," he said to me, "when next you visit tombs where maidens look
into your heart and hermits hear your very thoughts, I pray you leave me
behind. The holy Tanofir I love, if from afar, but I like not his house,
or his----" Here he looked at Karema who was regarding him with a sweet
smile over the lamp flame, and added, "There is something the matter
with me, Master; I cannot even lie."

"Cease from talking follies, O Sha