“Who were those men, Hassan?” Barry asked. “They are some of our excavators, sir,” Hassan replied. “Most of them are already at the camp: these are late arrivals who go to-morrow.” Barry glanced curiously at the delicate, almost effeminate face of the speaker, and he wondered, as he had wondered many times before, how Hassan es-Sugra had inspired, and how he retained, the profound respect of these men. And so, pursuing their leisurely way, they presently found themselves on the ancient road to Karnak, formerly bordered by Sphinxes throughout the mile of its length. The silence now was broken only by the distant note of a pipe, the faint throbbing of a drum. Barry grew silent, too, awed by the sleeping past upon which he intruded. At that point where the road turned left into the Avenue of the Rams he sighted the great shadowy ruins and hastened his steps. “It is fortunate, sir,” Hassan said, laying one slender hand upon Barry’s arm to check this impetuous increase of pace, “that we have been able to begin while the Nile was in flood.” “Why is that?” Barry asked. “Because,” Hassan replied, “the tomb, which is on high land, can only be approached from above at this season and is cut off from those routes along which people generally come. We are less likely to be disturbed.” At the entrance to the Temple, the _Ghafîr_ appeared, mysterious, out of a bank of shadow. Barry, a law-abiding citizen, had been given to understand that he must show his ticket here, but Hassan es-Sugra waved him aside, saluted the guardian, was saluted deeply in return, and they entered the great, silent building. Again Barry found himself glancing curiously at the face of his companion, delicately beautiful in the moonlight. He was learning a lesson that anyone susceptible to truth learns in Egypt. He was learning to look with less satisfaction upon the hurriedly grasped successes of modern life, and to experience an unpleasant sense of inferiority in the company of this dignified, placid, yet majestic Arab. Those who are sent to govern in these lands must be of a type immune from such impressions. Barry had too much poetry in his nature to be blind to some strange spiritual calm possessed by Hassan es-Sugra (whom Aunt Micky would have briefly classified as a heathen), the secret of which has been lost during generations of feverish endeavour. He found himself amid a forest of vast columns; statues looked down upon him scornfully; and all about him upon painted walls were those Pharaohs and gods whom the imagination of Pierre Loti has depicted as eternally signalling to one another. Bats haunted high, shadowy places, and the note of some night bird sounded eerily.