What dazed, wondering faces that moon of Egypt shone upon as they crowded around the excited speaker. Oswald Ferris cried, blankly: “You are not John Armstrong--then who are you?” “I am Ralph St. Alban, the husband of the woman whom you ruthlessly murdered,” the man answered, unhesitatingly. No one spoke for a moment, so great was the shock of wonder. Then Talbot Strangemore sprang forward, hastily, and faced the speaker. “Let me see if you speak the truth,” he cried. “I knew Ralph St. Alban, and I hated him once because he took Sibyl from me. The years have changed you, but, yes, I remember you now. You are indeed St. Alban, but how have you come to life again from the grave where they laid you?” In the moonlight a weary smile flickered over Ralph St. Alban’s thin, worn face. “I was never dead,” he said. “I was half maddened by Sibyl’s coquetries and cruelty. She was vain, light, false, falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung! I soon learned that she did not love me. She actually disliked and defied me. Her brilliant successes in the social world filled her with such intoxicating triumph that she had no other thoughts but to ruin the peace of other women and to break men’s hearts as well. With all her folly and wrongdoing I adored her, but no expostulation availed to turn her from her wild career. Then my love changed to hatred and despair. I might have divorced her and so freed myself from the incubus she had become upon me, but I was too proud to drag my name through the scandal of a divorce court. After wretched days and nights while my life was a torture to me I hit upon a startling plan to free myself from her. With the aid of a party too heavily bribed to betray me, I carried out my plan. The man that dropped dead suddenly in the street was not Ralph St. Alban, but a dead man from the morgue, dressed in my clothes, and propped up in my carriage, from which, of course, he tumbled lifeless into the street when the driver opened the door. But I practised the fraud triumphantly upon everybody, and while Sibyl was ordering the grand monument for my grave I was _en route_ for Egyptian deserts. I had been in Egypt as a boy with my father who was a noted traveler, and in my misery my thoughts turned thitherward again. You know it has been written,” he added, with a cold, sad smile, “that ‘he who has drunk of the Nile will always long to return and drink of its waters again.’” Every one was gazing at him in wonder and amazement while he talked, and seeing this, he turned suddenly upon Oswald Ferris and said, hoarsely: