"’Dawn has broken!’ I exclaimed in sudden anguish; ’the troops must have marched! Cameron cannot have escaped Mohammed, or, oh, my God! surely he would not, without making an effort to save me, abandon me to perish here!’ "’Perish here!’ repeated half-a-dozen dreary echoes. I looked around me in consternation. The sounds almost seemed to proceed from the red blubber-like lips of the frightful faces which I now perceived carved and painted on the outside of the upright mummy-coffers. They were the figures of the dead, and tinted with those imperishable colours with which the ancient Egyptians decorated the exterior of their temples. The large round eyes of these appalling effigies seemed to be staring hard at me from every dark corner, winking, goggling, and rolling; while their very mouths, capacious and red, expanded into a broad grin, methought, at my misery. Against the black wall they were ranked at equal distances, but here and there were some which had fallen to pieces, and lay upon the earth, exposing the decayed and mouldered corse standing stark, gaunt, and erect, swathed tightly in its cerements. Others had fallen down, and lay prostrate among little urns, containing, I suppose, the embalmed remains of the sacred ibis, the monkey, or other animals revered by the ancient idolaters. Enormous bats were sailing about, black scorpions, and many a huge bloated reptile, of which I knew not even the name, appearing as if formed alone for such a place, crawled about the coffins, or fell now and then with a heavy squabby sound from the wet slimy wall on the moist and watery pavement. "By the grey light, straggling through what seemed a joint in the key-stone of an arch above, I was enabled to note these things, and I did so with wary and fearful glances, while my heart swelled almost to breaking when I thought of my blighted hopes, and that home which was far awa—the green mountains of Mull and of Morven, and the deep salt lochs of Argyle; and, dearer than all, the well-known hearth where I had sat at the knee of my mother, and heard her rehearse those wild traditions of hill and valley, which endeared them more to me. "’Have the followers of the false Isauri departed?’ asked the guttural voice of old Mohammed or some one above me; while the cranny over-head became darkened, and the trampling of feet, together with the clatter of weapons, became audible. ’Have the eaters of pork and drinkers of wine,—have the unclean dogs departed from the walls of Iskandrieh?’ I listened in breathless suspense. "’They have,’ answered the yet more guttural voice of a Mameluke; ’they go towards the desert. May they perish in the sand, that the jackal and wolf may fatten and howl over their bones!’