very bones for a few piastres to the last ignorant tourist who came
their way, seeking what he might destroy. For in Egypt the unhappy, the
living find their bread in the tombs of the great men who were before
them.

But as it chanced, some little while afterwards, one who is known to
this writer, and a doctor by profession, passed up the Nile to Abydus,
and became acquainted with the men who had done this thing. They
revealed to him the secret of the place, telling him that one coffin
yet remained entombed. It seemed to be the coffin of a poor person,
they said, and therefore, being pressed for time, they had left it
unviolated. Moved by curiosity to explore the recesses of a tomb as yet
unprofaned by tourists, my friend bribed the Arabs to show it to him.
What ensued I will give in his own words, exactly as he wrote it to me:

"I slept that night near the Temple of Seti, and started before daybreak
on the following morning. With me were a cross-eyed rascal named
Ali--Ali Baba I named him--the man from whom I got the ring which I am
sending you, and a small but choice assortment of his fellow thieves.
Within an hour after sunrise we reached the valley where the tomb is. It
is a desolate place, into which the sun pours his scorching heat all
the long day through, till the huge brown rocks which are strewn about
become so hot that one can scarcely bear to touch them, and the sand
scorches the feet. It was already too hot to walk, so we rode on
donkeys, some way up the valley--where a vulture floating far in the
blue overhead was the only other visitor--till we came to an enormous
boulder polished by centuries of action of sun and sand. Here Ali
halted, saying that the tomb was under the stone. Accordingly, we
dismounted, and, leaving the donkeys in charge of a fellah boy, went up
to the rock. Beneath it was a small hole, barely large enough for a man