For a long while neither spoke. The sweat poured off the doctor’s face, and the chaplain’s white lips whispered prayers. Then by a huge effort the doctor pulled himself together. He pointed at the rope. “It has been missing since the execution,” he said. Then again the telephone bell rang. This time the chaplain needed no prompting. He went to it at once and the ringing ceased. For a while he listened in silence. “Charles Linkworth,” he said at length, “in the sight of God, in whose presence you stand, are you truly sorry for your sin?” Some answer inaudible to the doctor came, and the chaplain closed his eyes. And Dr Teesdale knelt as he heard the words of the Absolution. At the close there was silence again. “I can hear nothing more,” said the chaplain, replacing the receiver. Presently the doctor’s man-servant came in with the tray of spirits and syphon. Dr Teesdale pointed without looking to where the apparition had been. “Take the rope that is there and burn it, Parker,” he said. There was a moment’s silence. “There is no rope, sir,” said Parker. AT ABDUL ALI’S GRAVE Luxor, as most of those who have been there will allow, is a place of notable charm, and boasts many attractions for the traveller, chief among which he will reckon an excellent hotel containing a billiard-room, a garden fit for the gods to sit in, any quantity of visitors, at least a weekly dance on board a tourist steamer, quail shooting, a climate as of Avilion, and a number of stupendously ancient monuments for those archæologically inclined. But to certain others, few indeed in number, but almost fanatically convinced of their own orthodoxy, the charm of Luxor, like some sleeping beauty, only wakes when these things cease, when the hotel has grown empty and the billiard-marker “has gone for a long rest” to Cairo, when the decimated quail and the decimating tourist have fled northwards, and the Theban plain, Danæ to a tropical sun, is a gridiron across which no man would willingly make a journey by day, not even if Queen Hatasoo herself should signify that she would give him audience on the terraces of Deir-el-Bahari. A suspicion however that the fanatic few were right, for in other respects they were men of estimable opinions, induced me to examine their convictions for myself, and thus it came about that two years ago, certain days toward the beginning of June saw me still there, a confirmed convert. Much tobacco and the length of summer days had assisted us to the analysis of the charm of which summer in the south is possessed, and Weston--one of the earliest of the elect--and myself had discussed it at some length, and though we reserved as the principal ingredient a nameless something which baffled the chemist, and must be felt to be understood, we were easily able to detect certain other drugs of sight and sound, which we were agreed, contributed to the whole. A few of them are here subjoined.