From the floor of the cave it looked impossible for anything save a fly or a lizard to climb to the roof. When he started, Abington had not expected to do more than reach a point from where he could view the shadowed writing at closer range. He kept going, however, while the lame foot protested with twinges of pain that gradually ceased as the muscles limbered. Presently he stood on a low irregular balcony, the writings just over his head. This was something he had not suspected even while lying on his back studying the roof. He made his way along the ledge, forced to stoop so that he was soon walking like a gorilla with his hands sometimes touching the balcony floor. He became suddenly aware of an odd variation in the rough sandstone. The sharp, granular formation was worn down to a dull smoothness in the center of the ledge where he walked. It was a pathway polished by many shuffling feet--nothing else. He turned a corner and peered into blackness; an ancient water channel was there, no doubt. Abington lighted a match, saw that the hieroglyphics continued along the wall. Waiting only long enough to light the carbide lamp, he set off along the narrow passage, pausing now and then to study the inscriptions as he went. Broad chambers receded into blackness beyond the white light of his lamp and these he hastily explored before going on. Labyrinthine passageways were revealed as he turned the light this way and that, each opening inscribed with strange symbols carved in the rock at the sides. “A gold mine of records!” Abington exclaimed to himself in the whisper that was his habit when alone. “The ancient people who lived here seem to have had a Scribblers’ Club of very active members! An ancient catacomb, or I’m mistaken. That, or else these symbols were carved with the express purpose of misleading one. H’m! An attempt to confuse the devil and thwart him in his search for the souls of the dead! Now here’s a pretty problem for an archaeologist. Let’s see if I am smarter than the devil!” CHAPTER VIII--THE GREAT CHAIN OF EVIL Ordinarily John Abington thought fairly well of himself and he felt certain that these misleading characters could not prevent him from finding the way to the actual burial place. For one thing, he discovered that many of the passages--a miner would have called them drifts--had been hacked out by hand, with stone hammers and wedges. How long and arduous a task that had been, he could only conjecture. In several of the drifts he found implements to prove his theory. After a glance or two that identified them with the early people he had been tracing, he went on and left the implements lying there for the present, knowing that he could return at any time and get them if he wished to do so.