dinarily worked. There was
something methodical in her movements now that woke a new interest in
Simpkins. "What the dickens can she be up to?" he thought.

She had lit a lamp, and had shaded it, so that its rays were contracted
in a circle on the floor. From a cupboard let into the wall she was
taking bottles and brushes, a roll of linen bandages and some boxes of
pigments. After laying these on the floor, she walked over to the big
black mummy case by her table, and pushed until she had turned it around
with its face to the wall.

What heathen game was this? Simpkins' interest increased, and he poked
his head out boldly from the sheltering veil.

Mrs. Athelstone was standing directly in front of the case now, pulling
and tugging in an effort to bring it down on her shoulders. Finally, she
managed to tilt it toward her, and then, straining, she lowered it until
it rested flat on the floor.

"Sorry I couldn't have lent a hand," thought the gallant Simpkins; "the
old buck must weigh a ton. Now what's she bothering around that passe,
three-thousand-years-dead sport for?"

Her back was toward him; so, cautious and catlike, he stole from behind
the veil and glided to the shelter of a post not ten feet from her.
He peered around it eagerly. Still panting from her efforts, she was on
her knees beside the case, fumbling a key in the Yale lock, a curious
anachronism which Simpkins, in his cleaning, had found on all the more
valuable mummy cases.

The lid was of sycamore wood, comparatively light, and she lifted it
without trouble. Then the rays of the lamp shone full into the open
case, and Simpkins looked over the shoulders of the kneeling woman at
the mummy of a man who had stood full six feet in life. He stared long
at the face, seeking in those shriveled features a reason for the horror
which grew in him as he gazed, trying to build back into life again that
thing which once had been a man. For there was something about it which
seemed different from those Egyptians of whom he had read. Slowly the
vaguely-familiar features filled out, until Simpkins saw--not the
swarthy, low-browed face of an Egyptian king, but the ruddy, handsome
face of an Englishman, and--at last he was sure, a face like that of a
photograph in his pocket. And in that same moment there went through his
mind a sentence from the curious picture letter: "_That thing that I
have to do is about done._"

Already, in his absorption, he had started out f