“I don’t know that there is any,” I admitted.

“Then,” said he, “I don’t see how you support your suggestion that the person started from the neighbourhood of Eltham.”

On consideration, I had to admit that I had nothing to offer in support of my theory; and having thus shot my last arrow in this very unequal contest, I thought it time to change the subject.

“I called in at the British Museum the other day,” said I, “and had a look at Mr. Bellingham’s last gift to the nation.  The things are very well shown in that central case.”

“Yes.  I was very pleased with the position they have given to the exhibit, and so would my poor old friend have been.  I wished, as I looked at the case, that he could have seen it.  But perhaps he may, after all.”

“I am sure I hope he will,” said I, with more sincerity, perhaps, than the lawyer gave me credit for.  For the return of John Bellingham would most effectually have cut the Gordian knot of my friend Godfrey’s difficulties.  “You are a good deal interested in Egyptology yourself, aren’t you?” I added.

“Greatly interested,” replied Mr. Jellicoe, with more animation than I had thought possible in his wooden face.  “It is a fascinating subject, the study of this venerable civilisation, extending back to the childhood of the human race, preserved for ever for our instruction in its own unchanging monuments like a fly in a block of amber.  Everything connected with Egypt is full of an impressive solemnity.  A feeling of permanence, of stability, defying time and change, pervades it.  The place, the people, and the monuments alike breathe of eternity.”

I was mightily surprised at this rhetorical outburst on the part of this dry and taciturn lawyer.  But I liked him the better for the touch of enthusiasm that made him human, and determined to keep him astride of his hobby.

“Yet,” said I, “the people must have changed in the course of centuries.”

“Yes, that is so.  The people who fought against Cambyses were not the race that marched into Egypt five thousand years before—­the dynastic people whose portraits we see on the early monuments.  In those fifty centuries the blood of Hyksos and Syrians and Ethiopians and Hittites, and who can say how many more races, must have mingled with that of the old Egyptians.  But still the national life went on without a break; the old culture leavened the new peoples, and the immigrant strangers ended by becoming Egyptians.  It is a wonderful phenomenon.  Looking back on it from our own time, it seems more like a geological period than the life-history of a single nation.  Are you at all interested in the subject?”

“Yes, decidedly, though I am completely ignorant of it.  The fact is that my interest is of quite recent growth.  It is only of late that I have been sensible of the glamour of things Egyptian.”

“Since you made Miss Bellingham’s acquaintance, perhaps?” suggested Mr. Jellicoe, himself as unchanging in aspect as an Egyptian effigy.