During the preparation of the evening meal I became aware of a certain disquiet in the camp, and I noted a disinclination on the part of the native laborers to stray far from the tents. They hung together in a group, and whilst individually they seemed to avoid meeting my eye, collectively they watched me in a furtive fashion. A gang of Moslem workmen calls for delicate handling, and I wondered if, inadvertently, I had transgressed in some way their iron-bound code of conduct. I called Hassan es-Sugra aside. "What ails the men?" I asked him. "Have they some grievance?" Hassan spread his palms eloquently. "If they have," he replied, "they are secret about it, and I am not in their confidence. Shall I thrash three or four of them in order to learn the nature of this grievance?" "No thanks all the same," I said, laughing at this characteristic proposal. "If they refuse to work to-morrow, there will be time enough for you to adopt those measures." On this, the third night of my sojourn in the Holy Valley by the Temple of Hatasu, I slept soundly and uninterruptedly. I had been looking forward with the keenest zest to the morrow's work, which promised to bring me within sight of my goal, and when Hassan came to awaken me, I leaped out of bed immediately. Hassan es-Sugra, having performed his duty, did not, as was his custom, retire; he stood there, a tall, angular figure, looking at me strangely. "Well?" I said. "There is trouble," was his simple reply. "Follow me, Neville Effendi." Wondering greatly, I followed him across the plateau and down the slope to the excavation. There I pulled up short with a cry of amazement. Condor's shaft was filled in to the very top, and presented, to my astonished gaze, much the same aspect that had greeted me upon my first arrival! "The men----" I began. Hassan es-Sugra spread wide his palms. "Gone!" he replied. "Those Coptic dogs, those eaters of carrion, have fled in the night." "And this"--I pointed to the little mound of broken granite and sand--"is their work?" "So it would seem," was the reply; and Hassan sniffed his sublime contempt. I stood looking bitterly at this destruction of my toils. The strangeness of the thing at the moment did not strike me, in my anger; I was only concerned with the outrageous impudence of the missing workmen, and if I could have laid hands upon one of them it had surely gone hard with him. As for Hassan es-Sugra, I believe he would cheerfully have broken the necks of the entire gang. But he was a man of resource. "It is so newly filled in," he said, "that you and I, in three days, or in four, can restore it to the state it had reached when those nameless dogs, who regularly prayed with their shoes on, those devourers of pork, began their dirty work." His example was stimulating. _I_ was not going to be beaten, either.