g,
spicy odor, and left a cool and grateful sensation in one's parched
and dry throat. My blurred vision cleared, my dull and throbbing
head was relieved.

"An Alexandrine Copt gave me that," he said, watching its effect
with satisfaction. "He told me he had gotten it from a temple
papyrus, and that it was undoubtedly one of the lost perfumes of
Punt, used by the higher priesthood in their mysteries. Once a year
he sends me such a tiny vial as you see. I could hardly have
survived my searchings in this house, without that saving perfume.
Do you feel able to go on?"

"Yes."

"Come, then," and with that he stepped through the opening, and I
after him.

The room was not large--perhaps some nine feet high, some eight feet
wide. The walls were of such exquisitely grooved and polished red
mahogany that the candle-light was reflected in them as in mirrors;
one seemed to be surrounded by twinkling red stars. On each side of
the opening stood a tall and narrow cabinet, somewhat like a
high-boy, and in one corner was a chest with iron clasps and
handles. Over in another corner was a heavy, medium-sized square
table, on which stood a blackened candelabrum and a tarnished
silver-gilt cup. There were two chairs drawn up to this table. On
one of them, fallen forward, was something.

Mr. Jelnik placed the candles in the empty sconces. We two stood
looking down, he with pity, I with a mounting, sick horror, at the
thing before us--the poor, huddled thing that had lain there so
long. For it was not, as one might suppose at first glance, a frayed
and threadbare mantle flung across one corner of the table. By the
long black hair it was a woman, and a young woman.

She had on what must once have been a most beautiful brown silk
dress, trimmed with quantities of fine lace, and looped up over a
stiff brocaded petticoat. Her skeleton feet were in the smallest of
low-cut shoes, the tarnished silver buckles of which were set with
rhinestones. Her head rested on her arm, outflung across the table.
The other arm hung limp, and the fingers pointed downward, as if
accusingly. She had quantities of glorious black hair, and this
alone had death respected; nothing else of her loveliness remained.
Under her fleshless hand lay the soiled and yellowed papers she had
written, and over which, in biting mockery, she had kept watch and
ward.

"Who is it? Oh, God, God!--who is it?" I gasped, and heard my voice
rattling in my throat like a dying wo