WE sought you at your house, Kit,” said Dr. Ulswater; “we sought you also at the establishment where you generate that mystical fluid which now travels meekly, invisibly, its slender wires, and now spits like a red-hot cat. You electrical engineers have your fingers on the pulse of the universe. I admire in you the representatives of the age.

“The condition of affairs in Portate was most mixed and unclassified. No light anywhere, except here and there a smoky lantern, and such sulphurous beams as the eye of imagination might detect, or conceive, gleaming from the bosoms of some thousands of furious citizens. We reached the railway station with the feeling of having been miraculously rescued. The town, however, was quieting down. Most of the citizens had gone home to plot your assassination. Your ultimatum seemed to be everywhere known. Evidently you were not meaning to be found that night by friend or foe, and therefore Sadler and I went our way in the interests of archÆology.

“There is a national museum at the capital of this country, which contains an extraordinary collection of Inca relics, but is as disorderly as Portate emotions. Thither we went by the slowest train the ingenuity of man ever invented, getting what sleep we could, through the night, upon car seats of mistaken construction, each one of which was a populous commonwealth of bugs.

“Arrived at our destination in the morning, I found my way to the Museum, and presently was buried from the world, lost to the present. It must have been near noon when Sadler came and found me surrounded by pottery, weapons, tools, and the swathed bundles of the mummied dead.

“'Doctor,' he said; 'when's your birthday?'

“I reflected.

“'Bless my soul, it's to-morrow! This thing's got to stop! I'll be older than an Inca!'

“'You're a swaddled infant,' he said. I thought Mrs. Ulswater said it was to-morrow. I've got a present for you.'

“Birthdays, indeed! What had I to do with birthdays, who was reborn into eternity on the day I married Mrs. Ulswater! I had no use for them. I wished some one would make me a present of the treasures of that mixed-up and ruinous museum, and rescue them for archaeology. Carvings! Do you happen to know that the Inca signs of the Zodiac are practically identical with the Egyptian, that, moreover, they probably antedate them, that——”

“No, we don't,” interrupted Sadler. “It ain't so.”

“I can prove it to any man with eyes,” shouted Dr. Ulswater, thumping his knee.

“Which I holds myself,” said Sadler, gloomily, “that any man, with eyes, can see as them signs of the Zodiac all comes from the jim-jams, and the first man that made 'em was the first man that had drunk not wisely but too often.”

“Ha!” said Dr. Ulswater. “Why! Now, that's an idea! It really is!”

“Fiddlesticks!” said Mrs. Ulswater. “What was the present, and what about it?”

Susannah said, “What's in the box?” and I,

“What are you doing with my trunk?”

Dr. Ulswater wanted to stop there and discuss the origins of the signs of the Zodiac, and the orderly narrative was getting into a bad condition, but Sadler took it up.

“Well, it was this way, ma'am,” he said. “I left the doctor at the Museum. Them mummies didn't look to me respectable, but maybe they are, only as you told me to look after the doctor, I didn't know as I'd ought to leave him in that there dissipated society. But I went off down the street, and by and by I see a man I knew, named Sanchez Beteta. He used to be a graceless young one, son of a poverty-stricken caballero who lived on Valencia Street in Portate. Beteta was walking stately and soft, and he had on patent-leather shoes that was pointed like pins, and he had a cane that was an airy vision, and a buttonhole bouquet, and fixings, and side whiskers, and clothes that was beautiful to make a bad egg remember its young dreams, and he come along like his garments was angels' wings. I says to myself: 'I want to be like that'; and I pokes him in the chest sudden and solid, and I says, sort of ingratiating:

“'Where'd you steal them clothes?' I says in West Coast Spanish. He looked me over with a haughty eye. Then he says:

“'If you're a ghost,' he says, 'I wished you'd fade away. How and why do you exist, aged one?' and I says:

“'Get me a bouquet and a cane. I want some vanity.'

“Then we went and got them vanities, and paraded in glory on the fashionable highway that's called 'The Paseo,' and he told me the origin of his clothes. They came from his being in the Government, a sort of Subcommissioner of National Monuments and Memorials, and from that position's having some pickings of drumsticks while his superiors was busy with other parts of the chicken. I told him how I'd come there, and how electricity had played it dark on Portate, and how Dr. Ulswater was at the Museum sorting out knowledge and wishing he had an Inca mummy for home consumption. Beteta knew about Portate. It was in the morning paper that's called 'El Patria.' Then he took to thinking.

“'Would the learned senor,' he says, 'pay a price for a royal mummy? He is, you say, of great wealth.'

“I says: 'Why?'

“'Because,' he says, 'I may have such an article to dispose of.'

“'Which,' I says, 'is a fraud. It's made of mashed paper and it ain't got no pedigree.'

“'Not at all,' he says, 'not at all! I scorn you. Could I, who am but an amateur, deceive one learned as your friend? It was in this way, simply. Some years ago an ancient tomb was opened and found to contain mummies of the family of the Inca, Huayna Capac. Of him you know nothing at all, but your friend does, and without doubt he knows that most of that family died during, or after, the Conquest. Without doubt he knows of the tomb I speak of and its discovery. It was described in the publications of science. Now the Museum is in my Department of Monuments and Memorials, and somewhat under my charge, because of my great interest in my country's antiquities. Also because of this interest I was allowed to acquire one of these relics for my private collection. But alas! I am unfortunate! Integrity and poverty go together. It rends my heart. I fear I had better dispose of my treasure. You will ask, “Why not to the Museum?” Again, alas! Evil tongues would whisper. I, an official of the Department, sell to the Department! My own conscience, too delicate, would shrink. But you are hardened, of an evil mind, a cynic. You don't understand the scruples.'

“'Sure,' I says, 'I do. Remorse and me are bosom friends. Come see the doctor.'

“'At present,' he says, 'I have an important engagement. Bring him to my house at three this afternoon. Number 20, Street of the Museum.'

“I went after the doctor then, and asked him would he have a birthday present, and what was the market price of royal mummies of the family of Hannah Atkins. 'Who?' says he, and I tried it again. 'Oh!' he says, 'Huayna Capac!'

“'The same,' I says. He stated a likely price, which stumped me some, for Beteta had only asked about a third of that for his mummy, and I didn't see Beteta's game. I judged he must be an ignorant amateur on mummies.

“We went to lunch, and about three o'clock we come round to Beteta's house. It stood side up to the side of the Museum, with a little paved court, or patio, between. You had to go into the patio to get into Beteta's house, and there was a small door in the Museum that opened on the patio too. Beteta let us in and showed his mummy in a box on a table, and it was that roped and done up in coloured cloth you could tell it from any sort of bundle, only there was a copper placard on it, which appeared to be antique.

“'It has been in the Museum for some days past,' says Beteta, 'because of comparisons I desired to make with the other plates.'

“'Ah!' says the doctor.

“'I regret that an important engagement now hurries me,' says Beteta. 'My house is yours, but if you go back to Portate to-day, the train leaves in two hours.'

“'Oh!' says the doctor. 'To be sure, we must go back.'

“'So regrettable! But, without doubt,' says Beteta, 'you will return. My house is yours. For me, but an amateur, to make acquaintance of a learned archaeologist, how grateful! You find here materials for packing. My house is yours. Adios, senores. The public servant is not master of his time. Adios, senores. My house is yours.'

“Then he took his cash and left us, we feeling sort of surprised.

“'What's your expert opinion?' says I.

“'Why,' says the doctor, putting on his glasses again and looking wise, I think you and your intimate friend belong to the genus gammon, species humbug; but his mummy is all right.'

“'If it's a sure Hannah Atkins, that's what I'm asking,' I says. 'I guess Beteta ain't even an amateur on mummies, and he's skeered of conversation with you. I guess you're right there.'

“We packed Hannah Atkins, and toward five o'clock I shouldered the box. Some populace saw us come from the patio and followed us to the station, wondering what a caballero, with a cane and a buttonhole bouquet, and a box four foot long on his shoulder, and a amiable large party in a white vest behind him, was doing with that there combination of circumstances. So we caught the train and started for Portate. There was another man I used to know on the train. He was a Scotch engineer in the employ of The Transport Company and named Jamison.”