“Truly you two should give thanks to God,” she said, “Who has brought you together again in so wondrous a fashion, as I do on your behalf from the bottom of my heart.  Yet you are still hemmed round by dangers many and great.  What now, Olaf?  Will you become a ghost also and dwell here in the tomb with Heliodore; and if so, what tale shall I tell to Palka and the rest?”

“Not so,” I answered.  “I think it will be best that we should return to Kurna.  Heliodore must play her part as the spirit of a queen till we can hire some boat and escape with her down the Nile.”

“Never,” she cried, “I cannot, I cannot.  Having come together we must separate no more.  Oh!  Olaf, you do not know what a life has been mine during all these dreadful months.  When I escaped from Musa by stabbing the eunuch who was in charge of me, for which hideous deed may I be forgiven,” and I felt her shudder at my side, “I fled I knew not whither till I found myself in this valley, where I hid till the night was gone.  Then at daybreak I peeped out from the mouth of the valley and saw the Moslems searching for me, but as yet a long way off.  Also now I knew this valley.  It was that to which my father had brought me as a child when he came to search for the burying-place of his ancestor, the Pharaoh, which records he had read told him was here.  I remembered everything:  where the tomb should be, how we had entered it through a hole, how we had found the mummy of a royal lady, whose face was covered with a gilded mask, and on her breast the necklace which I wear.

“I ran along the valley, searching the left side of it with my eyes, till I saw a flat stone which I knew again.  It was called the Table of Offerings.  I was sure that the hole by which we had entered the tomb was quite near to this stone and a little above it, in the face of the cliff.  I climbed; I found what seemed to be the hole, though of this I could not be certain.  I crept down it till it came to an end, and then, in my terror, hung by my hands and dropped into the darkness, not knowing whither I fell, or caring over much if I were killed.  As it chanced it was but a little way, and, finding myself unhurt, I crawled along the cavern till I reached this place where there is light, for here the roof of the cave has fallen in.  While I crouched amid the rocks I heard the voices of the soldiers above me, heard their officer also bidding them bring ropes and torches.  To the left of where you stand there is a sloping passage that runs down to the great central chamber where sleeps some mighty king, and out of this passage open other chambers.  Into the first of these the light of the morning sun struggles feebly.  I entered it, seeking somewhere to hide myself, and saw a painted coffin lying on the floor near to the marble sarcophagus from which it had been dragged.  It was that in which we had found the body of my ancestress; but since then thieves had been in this place.  We had left the coffin in the sarcophagus and the mummy in the coffin, and replaced their lids.  Now the mummy lay on the floor, half unwrapped and broken in two beneath the breast.  Moreover, the face, which I remembered as being so like my own, was gone to dust, so that there remained of it nothing but a skull, to which hung tresses of long black hair, as, indeed, you may see for yourself.