"There are other things--other things in the bag. Bring them to me," he said, in a low, weak voice, speaking with the greatest difficulty. I brought the bag over to him and turned its contents pell-mell upon the floor. Among the several articles of clothing were a few old letters which, at his direction, I burned amid the tinder of the banknotes. Then, on searching further, I found a small, and evidently very antique, statuette of a figure standing, holding a kind of spear. It was about seven inches high, much worn, with a square base, and of solid gold. Around it I noticed an inscription in hieroglyphics. "That," my dying friend managed to gasp, "is an ancient image--of the Egyptian God Osiris, son of Seb, and Nut, or Heaven and Earth, and married to Isis. He was held to have gone through sufferings--to have died--to have risen again, and finally to have become the Judge of the Dead, His mysteries and rites were--were the most important part of Egyptian wisdom. The inscription upon it shows that it was made by one Mersekha, in the reign of King Radadef, in the Fourth Dynasty--or about three thousand five hundred years before the Christian era. Take it for yourself, Mr Kemball," added the old man, his voice distinctly weaker. "It will serve as your mascot and will perhaps remind you of the friendless man whom you have to-day befriended." I stood by in silence, for I saw a distinct change had crept over him. I took a glass in which the doctor had placed some drug, giving me instructions to administer it to him, and I forced a few drops of it between his teeth. The evening was warm and oppressive. Twilight was just falling, and through the open window came the low hum of the motor traffic a few hundred yards away in the Strand. The hotel in which we were was a quiet, unostentatious little place in Surrey Street, to which, on leaving the ship two days before, he had persuaded me to accompany him. Some one had recommended him to go there, he said, in preference to the Savoy or Carlton. On board the _Miltiades_, which he had joined at Naples, he had displayed no outward sign of wealth--or that he possessed money to burn. Indeed, his dress was mean and shabby, and by the wardrobe contained in his two ragged bags, one would certainly never put him down as a man of means. It is generally dangerous, however, to judge a man by his clothes. The old clock of St Clement Danes struck eight, and a few moments later there came a low tap at the door, and the doctor again reappeared, and bent over his patient anxiously. He gave him a few more drops of the medicine, but the old man made an impatient gesture, and refused to swallow more. What request, I wondered, was contained in that crumpled and rather bulky letter which I held in my breast-pocket? Outside, in the corridor, the doctor told me that the end was quite near, and suggested that I should obtain something from him concerning his friends.