“Archie!  Archie!  She’s fainted.”

Hope rushed forward, and raised the stout little woman in his arms.  Jane, attracted by the clamor, appeared on the scene, and between the three of them they managed to get Mrs. Jasher placed on the sofa of the pink drawing-room.  She certainly was in a dead faint, so Hope left her to the administrations of Lucy and the servant, and walked out again into the garden, closing the cottage door after him.

He found the heartless Professor quite oblivious to Mrs. Jasher’s sufferings, so taken up was he with the newly found mummy.  Cockatoo had been sent for a hand-cart, and while he was absent Braddock expatiated on the perfections of this relic of Peruvian civilization.

“Will you sell it to Don Pedro?” asked Hope.

“After I have done with it, not before,” snapped Braddock, hovering round his treasure.  “I shall want a percentage on my bargain also.”

Archie thought privately that if Braddock unswathed the mummy, he would find the emeralds and would probably stick to them, so that his expedition to Egypt might be financed.  It that case Don Pedro would no longer wish to buy the corpse of his ancestor.  But while he debated as to the advisability of telling the Professor of the existence of the emeralds, Cockatoo returned with the hand-cart.

“You have lost Mrs. Jasher,” said Hope, while he, assisted the Professor to hoist the mummy on to the cart.

“Never mind! never mind!” Braddock patted the coffin.  “I have found something much more to my mind:  something ever so much better.  Ha! ha!”

CHAPTER XIV

THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS

In spite of newspapers and letters and tape-machines and telegrams and such like aids to the speedy diffusion of news, the same travels quicker in villages than in cities.  Word of mouth can spread gossip with marvelous rapidity in sparsely inhabited communities, since it is obvious that in such places every person knows the other—­as the saying goes—­inside out.  In every English village walls have ears and windows have eyes, so that every cottage is a hot-bed of scandal, and what is known to one is, within the hour, known to the others.  Even the Sphinx could not have preserved her secret long in such a locality.

Gartley could keep up its reputation in this respect along with the best, therefore it was little to be wondered at, that early next morning every one knew that Professor Braddock had found his long-lost mummy in Mrs. Jasher’s garden, and had removed the same to the Pyramids without unnecessary delay.  It was not particularly late when the hand-cart, with its uncanny burden, had passed along the sole street of the place, and several men had emerged from the Warrior Inn ostensibly to offer help, but really to know what the eccentric master of the great house was doing.  Braddock brusquely rejected these