erent superstition
of man, but because it so often _is_ terrible. He who would tamper with
the vast and secret forces that animate the world may well fall a victim
to them. And if the end were attained, if at last you emerged from the
trial ever beautiful and ever young, defying time and evil, and lifted
above the natural decay of flesh and intellect, who shall say that the
awesome change would prove a happy one? Choose, my son, and may the
Power who rules all things, and who says 'thus far shalt thou go, and
thus much shalt thou learn,' direct the choice to your own happiness
and the happiness of the world, which, in the event of your success,
you would one day certainly rule by the pure force of accumulated
experience.-- Farewell!"

Thus the letter, which was unsigned and undated, abruptly ended.

"What do you make of that, Uncle Holly," said Leo, with a sort of gasp,
as he replaced it on the table. "We have been looking for a mystery, and
we certainly seem to have found one."

"What do I make of it? Why, that your poor dear father was off his head,
of course," I answered, testily. "I guessed as much that night, twenty
years ago, when he came into my room. You see he evidently hurried his
own end, poor man. It is absolute balderdash."

"That's it, sir!" said Job, solemnly. Job was a most matter-of-fact
specimen of a matter-of-fact class.

"Well, let's see what the potsherd has to say, at any rate," said Leo,
taking up the translation in his father's writing, and commencing to
read:--

"_I, Amenartas, of the Royal House of the Pharaohs of Egypt, wife of
Kallikrates (the Beautiful in Strength), a Priest of Isis whom the
gods cherish and the demons obey, being about to die, to my little son
Tisisthenes (the Mighty Avenger). I fled with thy father from Egypt in
the days of Nectanebes,[*] causing him through love to break the vows
that he had vowed. We fled southward, across the waters, and we wandered
for twice twelve moons on the coast of Libya (Africa) that looks towards
the rising sun, where by a river is a great rock carven like the head
of an Ethiopian. Four days on the water from the mouth of a mighty river
were we cast away, and some were drowned and some died of sickness. But
us wild men took through wastes and marshes, where the sea fowl hid the
sky, bearing us ten days' journey till we came to a hollow mountain,
where a great city had been and fallen, and where there are caves of
which no man hath seen th