be well in his
eye. And when he sat down again one hand clutched tight the butt of a
revolver.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

VIII

"You seem strangely disturbed, Simpkins," said Mrs. Athelstone quietly;
but he fancied that there was a note of malicious pleasure in her voice.
"Has anything happened to alarm you?"

"I thought I heard a slight noise, as if something were moving behind
me. Perhaps a mummy was breaking out of its case," he answered, but his
voice was scarcely steady enough for the flippancy of his speech.

"Hardly that," was the serious answer; "but it might have been my cat,
Rameses."

"Not unless it was Rameses II., because--well, it didn't sound like a
cat," he wound up, guiltily conscious of his other reason for certainty
on this point. "Perhaps Isis has climbed down from her pedestal to
stretch herself," and he smiled, but his eyes were anxious, and he shot
a furtive glance toward the veil.

"It's hardly probable," was the calm reply.

"What? Can't the thing use its legs as well as its arms?"

"Ah! then you know----"

"Yes; she reached for me when I was dusting her off, but I kicked harder
than Doctor Athelstone, I suppose, and so touched the spring twice."

"You beast!"

"Well, let it go at that," Simpkins assented. "And let's hear the rest."
He was burning with impatience to reach the end and get away, back to
noisy, crowded Broadway.

But Mrs. Athelstone answered nothing, only looked off toward the altar.
It almost seemed as if she waited for something.

"Go on," commanded Simpkins, stirred to roughness by his growing
uneasiness.

"You will not leave while yet you may?" and her tone doubled the threat
of her words.

"No, not till I've heard it all," he answered doggedly, and gripped
the butt of his revolver tighter. But though he told himself that her
changed manner, this new confidence, this sudden indifference to his
going, was the freak of a madwoman, down deep he felt that it portended
some evil thing for him, knew it, and would not go, could not go; for he
dared not pass the ambushed terror of that altar.

"You still insist?" the woman asked with rising anger. "So be it. Learn
then the fate of meddlers, of dogs who dare to penetrate the mysteries
of Isis."

Simpkins took his eyes from her face and glanced mechanically toward
the veil. But he looked back suddenly, and caught her signalling with a
swift motion of her head to something in the darkness. Th