"It is well," continued Pharos. "Has all of which I wrote to thee been prepared?" "All has been prepared and awaits thy coming." "Return then and tell him who sent thee to me that I will be with him before he sleeps to-night." The man bowed once more and made his way to his boat, in which he departed for the bank. When he had gone, Pharos turned to me. "We are expected," he said, "and, as you heard him say, preparations have been made to enable us to carry out the work we have come to do. After all his journeying Ptahmes has at last returned to the city of his birth and death. It is a strange thought, is it not? Look about you, Mr. Forrester, and see the mightiest ruins the world has known. Yonder is the Temple of Luxor, away to the north you can see the remains of the Temple of Ammon at Karnak; five thousand years ago they were connected by a mighty road. Yonder is the Necropolis of Thebes, with the tombs that once contained the mortal remains of the mighty ones of Egypt. Where are those mighty ones now? Scattered to the uttermost parts of the earth, stolen from their resting-places to adorn glass cases in European and American museums, and to be sold at auction by Jew salesmen at so much per head, the prices varying according to their dates and state of preservation. But there, time is too short to talk of such indignity. The gods will avenge it in their own good time. Let it suffice that to-night we are to fulfil our errand. Am I right in presuming that you desire to accompany me?" "I should be sincerely disappointed if I could not do so," I answered. "But if you would prefer to go alone I will not force my presence upon you." "I shall only be too glad of your company," he answered. "Besides, you have a right to be present, since it is through you I am permitted an opportunity of replacing my venerable ancestor in his tomb. Perhaps you will be good enough to hold yourself in readiness to start at eleven o'clock. Owing to the publicity now given to anything that happens in the ruins of this ancient city, the mere fact that we are returning a mummy to its tomb, of the existence of which the world has no knowledge, would be sufficient to attract a concourse of people whose presence would be in the highest degree objectionable to me." "You must excuse my interrupting you," I said, thinking I had caught him tripping, "but you have just said that you are going to open a tomb of the existence of which the world has no knowledge. Surely my father opened it many years ago, otherwise how did he become possessed of the mummy?" "Your father discovered it, it is true, but he stumbled upon it quite by chance, and it was reburied within a few hours of his extracting the mummy. If he were alive now I would defy him to find the place again." "And you are going to open it to-night?" "That is my intention. And when I have done so it will once more be carefully hidden, and may woe light upon the head of the man who shall again disturb it!"