He had gained the information which he required from the
papyri, and it only remained to write it down while it was still fresh
in his memory. For a time his pencil travelled rapidly over the paper,
but soon the lines became less level, the words more blurred, and
finally the pencil tinkled down upon the floor, and the head of the
student dropped heavily forward upon his chest.

Tired out by his journey, he slept so soundly in his lonely post behind
the door that neither the clanking civil guard, nor the footsteps of
sightseers, nor even the loud hoarse bell which gives the signal for
closing, were sufficient to arouse him.

Twilight deepened into darkness, the bustle from the Rue de Rivoli waxed
and then waned, distant Notre Dame clanged out the hour of midnight, and
still the dark and lonely figure sat silently in the shadow. It was
not until close upon one in the morning that, with a sudden gasp and an
intaking of the breath, Vansittart Smith returned to consciousness.
For a moment it flashed upon him that he had dropped asleep in
his study-chair at home. The moon was shining fitfully through the
unshuttered window, however, and, as his eye ran along the lines of
mummies and the endless array of polished cases, he remembered clearly
where he was and how he came there. The student was not a nervous man.
He possessed that love of a novel situation which is peculiar to his
race. Stretching out his cramped limbs, he looked at his watch, and
burst into a chuckle as he observed the hour. The episode would make an
admirable anecdote to be introduced into his next paper as a relief
to the graver and heavier speculations. He was a little cold, but
wide awake and much refreshed. It was no wonder that the guardians had
overlooked him, for the door threw its heavy black shadow right across
him.

The complete silence was impressive. Neither outside nor inside was
there a creak or a murmur. He was alone with the dead men of a dead
civilisation. What though the outer city reeked of the garish nineteenth
century! In all this chamber there was scarce an article, from the
shrivelled ear of wheat to the pigment-box of the painter, which had
not held its own against four thousand years. Here was the flotsam and
jetsam washed up by the great ocean of time from that far-off empire.
From stately Thebes, from lordly Luxor, from the great temples of
Heliopolis, from a hundred rifled tombs, these relics had been brought.
The student glance