It will perhaps be of interest to the reader of romances to illustrate the above remarks by the narration of some of my own experiences; but there are only a few interesting and unusual episodes in which I have had the peculiarly good fortune to be an actor.  There will probably be some drama to be felt in the account of the more important discoveries (for there certainly is to the antiquarian himself); but it should be pointed out that the interest of these rare finds pales before the description, which many of us have heard, of how the archaeologists of a past century discovered the body of Charlemagne clad in his royal robes and seated upon his throne,—­which, by the way, is quite untrue.  In spite of all that is said to the contrary, truth is seldom stranger than fiction; and the reader who desires to be told of the discovery of buried cities whose streets are paved with gold should take warning in time and return at once to his novels.

If the dawning interest of the reader has now been thoroughly cooled by these words, it may be presumed that it will be utterly annihilated by the following narration of my first fruitless excavation; and thus one will be able to continue the story with the relieved consciousness that nobody is attending.

In the capacity of assistant to Professor Flinders Petrie, I was set, many years ago, to the task of excavating a supposed royal cemetery in the desert behind the ancient city of Abydos, in Upper Egypt.  Two mounds were first attacked; and after many weeks of work in digging through the sand, the superstructure of two great tombs was bared.  In the case of the first of these several fine passages of good masonry were cleared, and at last the burial-chamber was reached.  In the huge sarcophagus which was there found great hopes were entertained that the body and funeral-offerings of the dead prince would be discovered; but when at last the interior was laid bare the solitary article found was a copy of a French newspaper left behind by the last, and equally disgusted, excavator.  The second tomb defied the most ardent exploration, and failed to show any traces of a burial.  The mystery was at last solved by Professor Petrie, who, with his usual keen perception, soon came to the conclusion that the whole tomb was a dummy, built solely to hide an enormous mass of rock chippings the presence of which had been a puzzle for some time.  These masons’ chippings were evidently the output from some large cutting in the rock, and it became apparent that there must be a great rock tomb in the neighbourhood.  Trial trenches in the vicinity presently revealed the existence of a long wall, which, being followed in either direction, proved to be the boundary of a vast court or enclosure built upon the desert at the foot of a conspicuous cliff.  A ramp led up to the entrance; but as it was slightly askew and pointed to the southern end of the enclosure, it was supposed that the rock tomb, which presumably ran into the