ly was worn over a skirt of linen that had a purple
border. In the box that I have spoken of were the ornaments, all of
plain dull gold: a waist-band; a circlet of gold for the head from which
rose the crescent of the young moon and a necklace of emeralds, uncut
stones now much flawed, for what reason I do not know, but polished and
set rather roughly in red gold. Also there were two rings. Round one
of these a bit of paper was wrapped upon which was written, in another
hand, probably that of the father of the writer of the memorandum:--

"Taken from the first finger of the right hand of a lady's mummy which I
am sorry, in our circumstances, it was quite impossible to carry away."

This ring is a broad band of gold with a flat bezel upon which something
was once engraved that owing to long and hard wear now cannot be
distinguished. In short, it appears to be a signet of old European make
but of what age and from what country it is impossible to determine.
The other ring was in a small leathery pouch, elaborately embroidered
in gold thread or very thin wire, which I suppose was part of the lady's
costume. It is like a very massive wedding ring, but six or eight times
as thick, and engraved all over with an embossed conventional design of
what look like stars with rays round them, or possibly petalled flowers.
Lastly there was the sword-hilt, of which presently.

Such were the trinkets, if so they may be called. They are of little
value intrinsically except for their weight in gold, because, as I have
said, the emeralds are flawed as though they have been through a fire or
some other unknown cause. Moreover, there is about them nothing of the
grace and charm of ancient Egyptian jewellery; evidently they belonged
to a ruder age and civilization. Yet they had, and still have, to my
imagining, a certain dignity of their own.

Also--here I became infected with the spirit of the peculiar
Potts--without doubt these things were rich in human associations. Who
had worn that dress of crimson with the crosses worked on it in gold
wire (they cannot have been Christian crosses), and the purple-bordered
skirt underneath, and the emerald necklace and the golden circlet from
which rose the crescent of the young moon? Apparently a mummy in a tomb,
the mummy of some long-dead lady of a strange and alien race. Was she
such a one as that old lunatic Potts had dreamed he saw standing before
him in the filthy, cumbered upper-chamber of a ru