“I suppose the climate’s rather too moist; the heat would be rather trying to him there.”

“That so?”

“And he’s taken his ticket for Alexandria,” Westover pursued.

“Well, I guess that’s so.”  Whitwell tilted his backward sloping hat to one side, so as to scratch the northeast corner of his bead thoughtfully.

“But as far as that is concerned,” said Westover, “and the doctrine of immortality generally is concerned, Jackson will have his hands full if he studies the Egyptian monuments.”

“What they got to do with it?”

“Everything.  Egypt is the home of the belief in a future life; it was carried from Egypt to Greece.  He might come home by way of Athens.”

“Why, man!” cried Whitwell.  “Do you mean to say that them old Hebrew saints, Joseph’s brethren, that went down into Egypt after corn, didn’t know about immortality, and them Egyptian devils did?”

“There’s very little proof in the Old Testament that the Israelites knew of it.”

Whitwell looked at Jackson.  “That the idee you got?”

“I guess he’s right,” said Jackson.  “There’s something a little about it in Job, and something in the Psalms:  but not a great deal.”

“And we got it from them Egyptian d——­”

“I don’t say that,” Westover interposed.  “But they had it before we had.  As we imagine it, we got it though Christianity.”

Jombateeste, who had taken his pipe out of his mouth in a controversial manner, put it back again.

Westover added, “But there’s no question but the Egyptians believed in the life hereafter, and in future rewards and punishments for the deeds done in the body, thousands of years before our era.”

“Well, I’m dumned,” said Whitwell.

Jombateeste took his pipe out again.  “Hit show they got good sense.  They know—­they feel it in their bone—­what goin’ ’appen—­when you dead.  Me, I guess they got some prophet find it hout for them; then they goin’ take the credit.”

“I guess that’s something so, Jombateeste,” said Whitwell.  “It don’t stand to reason that folks without any alphabet, as you may say, and only a lot of pictures for words, like Injuns, could figure out the immortality of the soul.  They got the idee by inspiration somehow.  Why, here!  It’s like this.  Them Pharaohs must have always been clawin’ out for the Hebrews before they got a hold of Joseph, and when they found out the true doctrine, they hushed up where they got it, and their priests went on teachin’ it as if it was their own.”

“That’s w’at I say.  Got it from the ’Ebrew.”

“Well, it don’t matter a great deal where they got it, so they got it,” said Jackson, as he rose.

“I believe I’ll go with you,” said Westover.

“All there is about it,” said the sick man, solemnly, with a frail effort to straighten himself, to which his sunken chest would not respond, “is this:  no man ever did figure that out for himself.  A man sees folks die, and as far as his senses go, they don’t live again.  But somehow he knows they do; and his knowledge comes from somewhere else; it’s inspired—­”