With a half-stifled gasp the man shrank back and dropped the lamp, and the Professor heard him say to the woman in a shuddering whisper: "By the High Gods, Neb-Anat, it is a miracle! Do you not see her? It is she--the Queen--alive again, as the ancient prophecy said she should be. What magic have these heathens used?" "Yes," replied the woman, whispering lower, "truly it is the Queen, and she is alive and sleeping--no doubt passing from the sleep of death through the sleep of life to life again. Now, O Pent-Ah, is our task much harder, yet will its accomplishment be all the more glorious for you and me, and greatly will our Lord reward us if we can restore to his keeping, not the ravished mummy of Nitocris, but the Queen herself, warm and breathing and beautiful, as she was in the ancient days of the great Rameses." "I'll be hanged if you do!" said the Professor to himself, "not, at least, if Her Majesty's legacy to me is worth anything. Abduct my daughter at the dead of night, would you, you scoundrels? We'll see about that. If you don't leave this house as thoroughly frightened as ever you were in your lives, I know nothing about the fourth dimension." Meanwhile he heard them both groping about the floor after the lamp. The woman found it, and pressed the button. The ray fell on the man's face, and he saw that the olive of his skin had turned to a ghastly grey. His eyes were wide open, and his mouth and nostrils were working with intense excitement. Then the woman turned the ray on Niti's face again. "They will wake her if this goes on much longer," said the Professor to himself again. "I had better stop this little comedy before it becomes a tragedy. Poor Niti would go half mad if she found these two scoundrels by her bedside--and yet if I do anything out of the way they will yell. Ah, I think I have it!" He walked softly out of the room, and when he got into the passage he whispered in the tongue that had become so strangely familiar to him: "Pent-Ah, Neb-Anat, come hither instantly! Who are you that you should disturb the slumbers of your Lady the Queen!" He saw them stare at each other with eyes wide with fear and wonder. "It is the command of the Mighty One," whispered the woman, taking hold of the man's hand and drawing him towards the door. "And He must be obeyed," said he in reply, bowing his head and following her. They closed the door very softly behind them. The Professor could not repress a sigh of thankfulness for Niti's escape from what, at best, would have been a very terrible fright. "And now, my friends," he went on to himself, "I think I can teach you not to come into an English gentleman's house again with an idea of stealing his property, to say nothing of abducting his daughter."