One evening, some weeks later, when the trio, Margaret, Freddy and Michael, were busily engaged in sorting and cleaning the day's finds, which had been more than usually interesting, Margaret held up for inspection a tiny alabaster kohl-pot, which she had freed from the incrustations of thousands of years. It was exactly similar to a little green glass bottle which she had bought in the bazaar at Assuan, in which the modern Egyptian, but more especially the Coptic, women carry the kohl which they use for blacking their eyes and eyebrows. Margaret showed Freddy the bottle, which led to a discussion about the similarity of the customs of the modern Egyptians and those in the pictures in the tombs, whose decorations always reveal the more human and intimate side of the life of ancient Egypt than the decoration of the temples.

"They were as vain and fond of making up as any woman of to-day," Freddy said. "We find no end of recipes for cosmetics and hair-dyes and restorers. One popular pomade was made of the hoofs of a donkey, a dog's pad and some date-kernels, all boiled together in oil. It was supposed to stop the hair from falling out and restore its brilliancy. There is another, even more savoury, for hair-dying."

"Do you suppose they still use that receipt?" Michael said.

"I shouldn't wonder. Customs never die in Egypt—they have had the same superstitions and the same customs for thousands of years. The Copts have clung more jealously to them, of course. The Moslem invasion did a little to change some of them, but not many."

Margaret listened while Freddy explained how the Moslems, after the Arab invasion, behaved with regard to the festivals and superstitions of the pagans very much in the same way as the Early Christian church in Rome behaved with regard to the pagan festivities and superstitions—adapting them, as far as was possible, to the new religion, grafting on such things as the people would not or could not renounce. The wisdom of the custom was obvious. The new converts, who believed in one God Whose Prophet had come to knock down all graven images in the temples, were still allowed the protection and comfort of their personal amulets, which were powerful enough to protect them from every evil imaginable, or to bring them all the blessings their simple souls desired. Arab workmen, who believe that Allah wills all things, that whatsoever happens, it is his purpose, will flock round any soothsayer who professes to see into the future and do the most absurd things conceivable to keep off the evil eye. The eye of Horus is still their favourite amulet.

"Abdul professes to tell fortunes and see into the future. They do sometimes manage to hit off some wonderfully clever guesses," Freddy said. "Abdul has been curiously correct in a number of things he has foretold relating to this bit of work."

"What did he tell you about this excavation?"

"He didn't tell me—I overheard the workmen's chatter. He has worked them up to a pitch of absurd excitement."

"What sort of things has he foretold? Good or bad? What things have come true?"

"I forget the small points now. I really can't tell you. He predicts all sorts of extravagant things about the inside of the tomb, says he has seen visions of a wonderful figure of a queen, dressed as if for her bridal, and the place all glittering with gold and precious stones—the most superb tomb that has ever been opened."

"Oh!" Meg said excitedly. "I wonder if it will be?—if there will be any truth in it?"

"Tommy-rot!" Freddy said. "But the excitement's spread—the men are working like mad—never did so much good work before."

"May I talk to Abdul? I'd love to have my future told!"

"I'd rather you didn't—at least, I would rather the other workmen didn't know he had spoken to you. I don't like them to imagine that we believe in such things."

"Very well," Meg said. "I see what you mean."

"You are never wise to let the natives lose their respect for your disdain of spooks and superstitions. I never scoff at their fears and beliefs in every sort of imaginable supernatural power, but I like them to think that my religion places me above such terrors. We pray to our Christian God to protect us according to His will; they say five prayers to Allah daily, the one and only God, and at the same time at every hour of the day they perform countless acts and ceremonies to propitiate malign spirits and powers. They are a curious people—the best of them are very devout, but some of the most devout are not the best by any means."

"Do you mind if Michael sees the fortune-teller? It would be so interesting."

"He knows Abdul." Freddy looked at Mike. "It's different to letting one of our womenkind meddle in such things."

"Did the ancients believe in dreams?" Margaret said. Michael's eyes had spoken; he had seen the man.

"Don't you remember Joseph's dream?"

"Oh, of course!" Margaret said. "But Joseph seems a modern in this valley."

"The ancients looked upon dreams as 'revelations' from a world quite as real as that which we see about us when we are awake. They were sent by the gods and, according to the texts in the tombs, much desired."

Margaret's and Michael's eyes met. Her dream which had brought them together again had undoubtedly been sent by God.

There was an industrious silence for a little time, then Margaret asked, "Have you ever come across any traces of Akhnaton's religion in the tombs in this valley?"

An amused smile hovered round Freddy's mouth. It was obvious that
Margaret had caught something of Mike's enthusiasm for the heretic
Pharaoh.

"No, nothing of his religion," he said. "It is too far from his scene of action; his influence was almost local—it was a personal influence and died at his death. He was a man born before his time; the world was not ready for his doctrines—they were far above the people's heads."

"How do we know?" Mike said eagerly. "Surely God knows best when to send His messengers, when to reveal Himself?"

"Anyhow," Freddy said, "you know that when he died his teachings died too. The people who had professed his beliefs returned to their old gods. The one and only trace of Akhnaton's influence here is in his mother's tomb, where every sign of Aton worship has been chopped off the wall, every trace of his symbols obliterated. Akhnaton had no doubt introduced them into his mother's tomb; she had shared his beliefs, which had not, of course, become extreme at the time of her death."

"Truth never dies," Mike said. "His beautiful city was abandoned, his temples neglected and overthrown, his people again became the victims of the money-making, political priesthood of Amon-Ra. But who can say that the spirit of Akhnaton is dead to-day? Who can tell that the seed of his mission bore no fruit? Thought never dies."

"As you like. Anyhow, even before he was buried—embalming was a lengthy process—his religion as a state religion, as anything at all of any influence, or as a power in the land, was doomed."

"You don't admire him as Mike does," Margaret said. "He seems to have been almost as perfect as a human being could be—the first living being to realize the divinity of God."

"As a religious dÉvouÉ, he was, as you say, almost a saint. He spent his life throwing pearls before swine—you might as well try to make a charity-school class see the beauty of Virgil in the original—and letting his kingdom go to rack and ruin."

"Oh," Margaret said, "you didn't tell me that." Her eyes searched
Mike's. "Did he let Egypt go to pieces?"

"He was anti-war, as I am," Mike said, "as all lovers of God and of mankind ought to be. He was perhaps foolish in his belief that if the world could be converted to the great religion of Aton, which meant perfect love for everything that God had created and absolute reverence for everything because He created it, then there would be no wars. If God is love and we believe in God, how can we kill each other? Akhnaton's idea of the duty of a king was the improvement of mankind. He tried to give men a new understanding of life and of God. The moral welfare of the human race was more to him than the aggrandizement of its emperors."

"I've no patience with all that," Freddy said. "He inherited a magnificent kingdom; he let it dwindle almost to ruin. If you could read some of the letters of Horemheb, the commander-in-chief of his army, begging him to send reinforcements to Syria, imploring him to realize the danger that menaced Asia, you would feel as impatient as I do with his mission work at Tel-el-Amarna, his cult of flowers and his new-fangled art."

"A man can't go against his own conscience. He didn't approve of war. It's an interesting fact that the only one of the old gods he recognized was MaÎt—he built a fine new temple to the goddess of truth at Tel-el-Amarna. He carried his enthusiasm too far," Mike said, "I grant that, but from his point of view these things were of little account. If he could have turned the heart of Egypt from the worship of false gods, if he could have imparted unto the minds of men the wonder and the love of God, all else, he thought, would follow after."

"A fanatic!" Freddy said.

"So were all saints."

"'For what shall it profit a man,'" Meg said, "'if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?'" Her voice was significant. "In his day, Christ was as great a fanatic, if you like to look at things from that point of view. Fancy fasting forty days and forty nights in the wilderness, calling upon men to leave their work and follow him, preaching against the rich! How you would have scoffed at him!"

"If Akhnaton hadn't been a king, if he had merely been a prophet and a teacher, he'd have been all right. But just you listen, Meg," Freddy said, "while I read you what a modern writer says about him, and he is an intense admirer of the character of Akhnaton. This is how he describes what the messengers must have felt when they hurried back to Egypt to the new capital of the fanatical king at Tel-el-Amarna, bearing entreaties from the commander-in-chief of the army in Syria to send reinforcements to help to deliver his distant kingdom from the oppression of her enemies." Freddy found the book and opened it. "Here it is—listen to this: 'The messengers have arrived at the City of the Horizon,' as Akhnaton called his new capital, 'Their hearts are full of the agony of Syria. From the beleaguered cities which they had so lately left, there came to them the bitter cry for succour, and it was not possible to drown that cry in words of peace, nor in the jangle of the septrum or the warbling of pipes. Who, thought the waiting messengers, could resist that piteous call? The city weeps and her tears are flowing. Who could sit idle in the City of the Horizon, when the proud empire, won with the blood of the noblest soldiers of the great Thothmes, was breaking up before their eyes? What mattered all the philosophies in the world, and all the gods in heaven, when Egypt's great dominions were being wrested from her? The splendid Lebanon, the white kingdoms of the sea, Askalon and Ashdod, Tyre and Sidon, Simgra and Byblos, the hills of Jerusalem, Kadesh and the great Orontes, the fair Jordan, Turip, Aleppo and distant Euphrates . . . what counted a creed against these? God, the Truth? The only god was He of the Battles, who had led Egypt into Syria; the only truth the doctrine of the sword, which had held her there for so many years.'"

Freddy turned over the leaves of the book which he had been reading from, and began again quoting from Weigall's Life of Akhnaton.

"'Love! One stands amazed at the reckless idealism, the beautiful folly of this Pharaoh who, in an age of turbulence, preached a religion of peace to seething Syria. Three thousand years later mankind is still blindly striving after these same ideals in vain.'"

"How pathetic!" Margaret said. "And yet . . ." she hesitated, ". . . the God of Battles . . . Akhnaton's was the God of Love, the God of everlasting Mercy."

"What right had Egypt ever to go into Syria?" Mike said. "It sounds fine and one can grow enthusiastic over these beautiful old names and visualize a million greatnesses that Akhnaton was resigning, but what right had Egypt in Syria? The right of might, the right of the stronger against the weaker—Prussia's might against Poland, Spain's might against Flanders, any large country's might against a weaker, the right of armies, the right of the greed of monarchs! Akhnaton believed in God, and to his thinking war could not go hand-in-hand with a love for all that God had created."

"Get out, Mike!" Freddy said. "You'll get on to Ireland next—I know him, Meg!"

"I agree with him in a way," Meg said. "To give people the love of God and the proper sense of beauty, the enjoyment of all that God has made for their good, in the best way, which was surely the way of Akhnaton, seems better than spending the kingdom's wealth and brains in maintaining armies to kill human beings and invade new territories."

"The great question," Freddy said, "is nationality. If you don't care who wipes you out, or to what country or king you belong, well and good, live the idealized life. Someone will think quite differently and gobble you up. If Akhnaton hadn't died, there would soon have been no Egypt, no Egyptian peoples."

"They'd have been quite as happy," Mike said, "for in those days the kings actually owned their empires, they were their own property to do what they liked with. The people fought for their King, not for their country. An absolute monarch was an absolute monarch, the kingdom was his to do as he liked with."

"How was it saved? Was it ever as great again?" Meg asked.

"It was saved by his son dying almost directly after he did and Horemheb, the great commander-in-chief, at last got his way. He persuaded the reigning Pharaoh, who had married Akhnaton's daughter, to himself lead an expedition and go into Asia. After that Pharaoh's death, and the death of the next one, Ay, Akhnaton's father-in-law, who reigned for a short time—and who, to do him justice, tried to remain faithful to Akhnaton's ideal Aton worship—the great warrior and commander-in-chief, Horemheb, was raised to the throne. He brought Egypt back to its old conditions. Do you care to hear what Weigall says about him?—how completely he wiped out the 'idealism of the dreamer'?" Freddy found the passage he wanted. "'The neglected shrines of the old gods once more echoed with the chants of the priests through the whole land of Egypt . . . he fashioned a hundred images. . . . He established for them daily offerings every day. All the vessels of their temples were wrought of silver and gold. He equipped them with priests and with ritual priests, and with the choicest of the army. He transferred to them lands and cattle, supplied with all necessary equipment. By these gifts to the neglected gods, Horemheb was striving to bring Egypt back to its natural condition and with a strong hand he was guiding the country from chaos to order, from fantastic Utopia to the solid Egypt of the past. He was, in fact, the preacher of sanity, the chief apostle of the Normal.'"

"It was in his reign," Michael said, "that Akhnaton's fair city at Tel-el-Amarna was utterly abandoned; his beautiful decorations, which were intended to illustrate to the people the beauty of God in Nature, were ruthlessly destroyed. His body, which had been laid in the far-away cliffs behind his city, was removed and placed in his mother Queen Thi's tomb in this valley."

"What a tragic life!" Margaret said. She was thinking of the sad face as she had seen it in her vision. Did any one understand him? Freddy evidently understood Horemheb, the apostle of the Normal, who scorned the fantastic Utopia of Akhnaton, much better.

"He was very much beloved and probably as much understood by a few as most pioneers have been. It was in his father-in-law's tomb that his beautiful hymn was discovered, for he was one of his devoted followers in Akhnaton's lifetime."

Margaret smiled. "The beautiful hymn you said to me that morning at dawn, Mike?"

"The same," Michael said. "I have often thought of it in connection with St. Francis' Canticle to the Sun."

"It is difficult," Margaret said, "to know how far wars and empire-building, and everything that makes for worldly-ambition and encourages the vanity of monarchs, are compatible with the true meaning of the words 'God is Love,' with the true conception of Christ's doctrines."

"Which were Akhnaton's," Michael said. "He did all in his power to raise the morals of his people. He was the first king to recognize the higher rights of women, to insist on the reverence of womanhood. He brought his queen forward on every public occasion, and that had never been heard of before. He tried to introduce a new ideal of home-life. He was a model father and husband. He thought of nothing but the moral welfare of his people and of their happiness. He was willing to lose his kingdom for the saving of their souls."

"And yet he was a bad king?" Margaret said.

"He had none of the qualities of a ruler or an empire-builder," Freddy said.

"Damn empire-building!" Mike said. "If people would only stick to their own natural territory and not go straying into other peoples!"

"I wonder what you'd do if Germany strayed into ours? Sit down and let them walk over you?"

"I'd do what you'd do," Mike said, with a flash of Irish anger in his eyes—"kill every damned one of them!"

"There you are!" Freddy said hotly.

"No, I am not," Michael said, "for, as I said, what we've got, let us keep—England's possessions no more belong to Germany than my soul does. But some of our wars—well!" he laughed. "Empires are built up in rum ways, ways I don't agree with, but we won't do any good by handing them over now to feed the vanity of the Kaiser. But the Egyptians had enough land in Africa to expand in, there was no need for their warrioring in strange lands."

"Let's chuck the subject," Freddy said good-naturedly, "and stick to work. I want to get these boxes cleared out to-night and we never do good work while we argue."

"I can't help smiling," Margaret said. "It's really too funny to think that we've got quite cross and snappy over the character of a man who lived more than three thousand years ago."

"Oh, we often do that," Michael said. "You should have heard about a dozen of us quarrelling some time ago over hair-splitting theories on a much less human subject, one belonging to pre-dynastic times!"

"I wish Aunt Anna could see us, Freddy, sitting in this funny hut in this lonely desert valley, cleaning little objects and broken fragments of things that were buried three thousand years ago and fighting over a mummy, as she would say!"

Margaret had been working busily, so her tin cigarette-box, which had been quite full early in the evening with all sorts of small blue beads and tiny bits of pottery, was almost empty. She had been able to enjoy and follow all her brother's remarks about Akhnaton, as Michael had told her a great deal about him. In the three weeks which had passed since their visit to Assuan there had been no return of the vision, so she had insisted upon Michael telling her all that he could about Akhnaton. She felt anxious to understand something about the king whose personality interested and influenced him so greatly.

Michael had by no means banished the vision from his thoughts. He was convinced that Margaret had been privileged to see a vision of Akhnaton—indeed, the more he dwelt on his message, the more he felt sure that it was the beginning of a new phase in his life.

Over and over again he had repeated to himself the message: "Tell him to carry on my work."

Was he doing any work at the present time to help forward mankind? He was enjoying himself in a delightful way and to a certain extent he was assisting Freddy; but such assistance as he gave could easily be given by another; he was not essential.

There was only one man whom he had a longing to consult and that was Michael Ireton. Since his marriage with Hadassah Lekejian, a Syrian girl of great beauty and strength of character, Michael Ireton had given his time and brains and money to the founding of settlements in various parts of Egypt for the raising of the moral status of women in Egypt. He was a practical man of the world, with a charming personality. His wife was one of the most cultivated and fascinating women Michael had ever met.

If he confided to Freddy his growing desire to do the work which he felt was the work he was called upon to do, Freddy would only look upon it as a fresh example of his drifting character.

The subject of Akhnaton had been dropped and perfect good humour was restored again. Michael's thoughts had soared into what Freddy called his "Kingdom of Idle Dreams." Freddy's thoughts were very practical, although they related to the history of a lost civilization and to the unearthing of objects which the sands of the desert had concealed for thousands of years. He and the workers knew that the next few days would be days of intense excitement.

So far Freddy's surmises had been correct. The chaff and scoffing which he had so good-naturedly put up with from the fellow-excavators who had been to visit the camp were likely to be turned the other way. He had little or no doubt left that he had struck an important tomb, probably the tomb of the Pharaoh for whom he was looking.

In a few days the big shaft which led to the mouth of the tomb would be cleared. Tons upon tons of debris had been thrown out of it; the work had been stupendous. The two hundred native workers and the other more experienced diggers had worked unremittingly. Freddy was living in a high state of nervous tension. The news had spread far and wide that "Mistrr Lampton" had discovered a new tomb and one which presumably had never been entered. Freddy knew that this news would spread, would be carried on the wings of the morning in a manner which no European can ever discover. Means of transmitting news is one of the secrets which no native in Africa, North or South, has ever divulged to an European. There are hundreds of theories on the subject. Do pigeons act as carriers? Some people suggest this theory. Or is it by some wireless method which has been known to all primitive races and only lately discovered by scientific scholars of the West?

So far no one has fathomed the mystery. But Freddy knew that the news would be sent far and wide, and that every seeker after "antikas" would be prowling round the opened site. Directly the tomb was opened, it would be the Mecca of every tomb-plunderer. He had sent word for a guard of police to be ready to come when he summoned them.

When the tomb was opened he would have to prevent anyone from going into it until a photographer had arrived from Cairo to photograph it and until after the Supervisor-General of the Monuments of Upper Egypt had arrived on the spot and inspected it.

He could feel the excitement of the natives, who have absolutely no sense of honour where "antikas" are concerned. It has proved almost an impossible work to convince them that the excavators and the scholars who are engaged in the work of archaeology in Egypt, or the wealthy man who has paid for the expenses of a camp, are not one and all "out on the make." They are convinced that these eager, enthusiastic scholars are just the same as they are, interested in it from a pecuniary point of view. The curios and wonders which they dig out of the bowels of the earth put gold into their pockets.

Freddy's Ras, or native overseer, was a highly intelligent man, who had a genuine appreciation for antiques—he was a clever hand at faking them and did a good business with tourists—but at heart even he doubted the sincerity and single-minded purpose of the British School of Archaeology in Egypt, and "Mistrr Lampton's" absolute clean-handedness in the business.

Freddy had never left the camp for more than half an hour since the excavation had become "hot." It was a strenuous time.

Naturally Margaret's thoughts were centred and engrossed in her brother's work. She could scarcely hold her soul in patience while the deep shaft was being cleared, a long and tiresome job. But at last they could count the time by days before the entrance to the tomb would be reached.

The little store-room in the hut was packed full of boxes which held the small finds. Margaret's work for some days past had been to piece together (Freddy had taught her how) the tiny fragments of a smashed vase which her brother had found. The pieces were all there, for it had been discovered in a little hollow in the sand. The conventional decoration was of an unique type; and on it was traced a branch of a plant which seemed to Freddy to resemble with extraordinary exactness a branch of the Indian fig, the prickly pear, so familiar to all travellers in Southern Italy. As the Indian fig was not introduced into Egypt until the Middle Ages, or so it had generally been supposed, for it was not indigenous, Freddy was anxious to find out if the decoration on the vase was going to prove that after all it was known to the Egyptians long before it was brought over from America. He also held that there was something in the theory which has of late become current that camels may have been known and used in Egypt from very early times, that their absence in all pictorial art in temples and tombs may be owing to the fact that the Egyptians divided animals into two classes, the clean and the unclean; that neither into temples nor into tombs could the unclean be introduced in any form of art whatsoever.

These were the sort of discussions with which Margaret had already grown familiar. She felt that in piecing together and sketching as accurately as possible the cactus-like branch of the little plant engraved on the broken vase, she was actually helping to forge a link in one of the minute chains of Egyptian archaeology.

Her brother's memory amazed her and his intelligence stimulated her. He had been such a boy at home. Egypt had converted him into a strong serious scholar. His fair head, bent over his work, with the lamplight shining on it, was so dear to her that impulsively she put her long strong fingers on the glittering hair; she longed to kiss it.

"Dear old boy!" she said. "Isn't it all just too exciting? Isn't life thrilling? Isn't it lovely to be alive?"

Freddy did not look up. "Some girls," he said, "mightn't think this being very much alive—the sorting out of bits of broken rubbish, thrown out of a tomb which has been forgotten for two or three thousand years. Did you ever think you'd care to know whether a prickly pear was indigenous to Egypt or was not? Or whether canopic jars had their origin in family grocers' jars being lent by the head of the house to hold the intestines of some dear-departed?"

Meg laughed. "It is all too odd, but being in it, and actually knowing that we are going to see into that tomb in a few days and discover who the king was who was buried there, and all about his personal and family affairs, and be able to touch the jewels he was buried with, it's too interesting for words, I think!"

"I hope you won't be disappointed. It may have been robbed."

"But you don't think so?"

"No, I don't—not at present. There was a tomb opened at one of the camps, not long ago, which told a tragic story of the end of robbery and plunder. The roof had fallen in while the burglar was busy unwrapping the cloths from the dead mummy. He was evidently trying to get at the heart-scarab, I suppose, and at the jewels which the windings held in their place. He had been smothered, taken in the act. Probably he had left his fellow-plunderers at the entrance; the roof may have looked unsafe, but he had hoped to collect all the jewels and scarabs before it gave way. Fate played him a nasty trick. The roof caved in, and we have secured all the jewels he had collected together and have learned a lesson of what must have often happened. The mummy's body was, of course, still perfect. Of the intruder only bones were visible and some fragments of his clothes. Things keep for ever in these hermetically-sealed Egyptian tombs, where neither rust nor moth ever entered in, but where thieves did break through and steal."

"How thrilling!" Margaret said. "How did you guess that the skeleton was the skeleton of a robber? I suppose as he never returned, his friends just went off and left him?"

"By the scattered jewels and the way the mummy was lying. Why should a skeleton be inside a royal tomb? Why should the mummy be out of its coffin and partly unrobed? We have actually found before now plans which the sextons and the guardians of the tombs had made for themselves, of all the tombs in the cemetery which was in their care. They knew how they could be entered one from another. Of course, this valley is different. The tombs are isolated and carefully hidden. It was never a public cemetery."

"Was Akhnaton's tomb intact? Had it been robbed?"

Freddy laughed. "Back again to the tabooed subject?"

Meg laughed too. "We shan't fight this time, I promise."

"His city and palace and tomb were utterly desolated, but his mummy had been taken away from his own tomb, before it was desolated, and brought to his mother's."

"Oh, you told me—I forgot." Into Meg's mind came again the words spoken by the sad voice, "My earthly body was brought to my mother's tomb in this valley."

When the night's work was completed, Meg voted that they should sit for a few minutes in front of the hut and try to get the "mummy-shell" and the microbes of Pharaonic diseases out of their nostrils. Freddy had never allowed them to sleep right out in the open, much as they had wished it. It was not safe, even with the dogs and his trustworthy house-boys. He would not hear of it; and he was wise.

Gladly he agreed to refreshing their lungs with the beautiful night air. Indeed, they were all three so happy together and there was so much to talk about and discuss, that bed seemed a bore. Physically tired as they were, owing to the nervous excitement in the atmosphere of their day's surroundings, sleep seemed very far off.

"Just half an hour, Freddy," Margaret said, as she threw herself down on a long lounge chair, and clasping her hands behind her head, gazed up to the heavens. "How glorious it is!" she said. "I'm so happy."

They all three lighted cigarettes and smoked in silence. Freddy was as happy as Meg; Mike was restless.

At the end of the half-hour Meg got up and said, "Who'd exchange this for a city? Freddy, you ought to get to bed—you're dead tired, really."

He rose reluctantly. "I suppose I must." His thoughts were on the morrow's work. If the tomb was going to be a really big thing, it meant a lot more to him than Meg understood. He was very young; he had not as yet struck any remarkable find; he had his reputation to make. His theories had caused much comment.

"I could never live in a city again," he said. "This life has made it impossible. And the odd thing is that it has made cities seem to me the loneliest, most desolate places in the world. I never feel in touch with anyone. Even the other night at the ball, jolly as it was, I never once talked to anyone about anything that really interested me. I never felt that anyone would understand a single thing about all that is my real life. I suppose everyone feels the same—that their real selves are lost in crowds."

Michael and Margaret looked at each other. They had experienced the feeling; they had lost each other. In the valley they had come back to the things of Truth.

"You know I always abhorred town-life," Mike said, "and all its artificiality and rottenness and needless accumulation of unnecessary things."

"Brains congregate in cities, all the same," Freddy said, "if you can only strike them. We'd get too one-sided here, too lost in the past. It's never wise to let your hobbies and work exclude all other interests."

"I begin to think there is no past," Meg said. "Time lost itself in Egypt. Three thousand years mean nothing. The people who lived and ruled before Moses was born are more alive and real to-day for us than the events of yesterday's evening paper. I think I have learned just a tiny bit of what infinity means."

"Or rather, you have learned that you haven't," Mike said. "By the time you have discovered that three thousand years are just yesterday, you have grasped the truth of the fact that no mortal mind can conceive the meaning of the word infinity."

"Have you ever seen a ghost in Egypt, Freddy?" Margaret said, irrelevantly.

"No, never," he said.

"Did the ancients believe in them?"

Freddy was locking up the hut. "We never come across any writing or pictures to show us that they did, so I don't think it's likely. They have told us most things about themselves and about what they saw and feared."

"I wonder?" Margaret said meditatively. "I wonder if they did or didn't?"

"Of course they believed," Michael said, "that the soul of a man, the anima, at the death of the body, flew to the gods. It came back at intervals to comfort the mummy."

"That's nothing to do with what we call ghosts," Freddy said, "and no one but the mummy is supposed to have been visited by it. It took the form of a bird with human hands and head; it was called the ba."

"Oh, my friendly ba!" Meg said. "I have just been reading all about it—in Maspero's book you see pictures of it sitting on the chest of the mummy."

"That's it," Freddy said. "You're getting on. But as for real ghosts, there's no record of them—not that I know of. Good-night," he said, "I'm off."

"Good-night," Meg said, "and the best of luck to tomorrow's dig."

For a moment Michael and Meg stood together. "I know what is in your heart," she said. "I begin to think that Egypt is making practical me quite psychic."

"I feel I ought to be up and doing. I believe there is work I can do—I believe it is the work I can do best."

"You only can judge," Meg said.

"I have always maintained that a man should devote himself to the work he can do best, no matter how unpractical or how unremunerative it may seem to others. He must be himself, he must work from the inside."

"You are doing good work here."

"Not my work—another's."

"I can't advise. I know you must judge."

"It means leaving this valley if I do it."

"Oh," Meg said, "not yet? Not until the tomb is opened, anyhow?"

"No," he said, "I'll wait for that. I want to see Ireton—I'm going to see him to-morrow when I go to Luxor for Freddy."

"Are you going?" she said. "I didn't know."

"Yes," he said. "He wants a lot done and he can't leave the dig."

"No, he can't." Meg paused; in her heart a fear had suddenly leapt up. The soft, delicately-tinted woman on the balcony at Assuan stood out before her as plainly as the luminous figure of Akhnaton had done. She was at Luxor! Two letters had arrived from Luxor for Mike in a woman's handwriting.

"I will see Michael Ireton," he repeated. "His work is magnificent; so is his wife's. His work is amongst the men."

"In their settlements, you mean?"

"Yes, amongst the Copts, most particularly."

"It will be sad to break up our trio," she said. "We are so happy." She held out her hand. "Good-night. I was to help, not to retard—I must remember my dream."

"Good-night." Mike grasped her hand. "You are part of the light.
Keep close to me when I am in Luxor tomorrow."