He

This youth was of peculiar aspect. He was a member of the nearly extinct Boshman tribe of Kokoatinaland. His long silky hair, originally black, had been blanched to a permanent and snowy white by failures in the attempt to matriculate at Balliol. He was short – not above four feet nine – and was tattooed all over his dark but intelligent features.

When he was introduced I had my first opportunity of admiring Leonora's extraordinary knowledge of native customs and etiquette.

'Let me present to you,' said the Master of St. Catherine's, 'the Boshman chief, Ustâni!'

'You 'stonish me!' answered Leonora, with a smile that captivated the Boshman. It is a rule among the tribes of Kokoatinaland, and in Africa generally, to greet a new acquaintance with a verbal play on his name.[3 - Is this bonâ fide? – Publisher.All right, see She (p. 145), Ayesha's elegant pun on Holly. It's always done – pun, I mean. – Ed.] Owing to our insular ignorance, and the difficulty of the task, this courtesy had been omitted at Oxford in Ustâni's case, even by the Professors of Comparative Philology and the learned Keeper of the Museum. From that hour to another which struck later, when he struck too, Ustâni was Leonora's slave.

I had no further opportunity of conversing with Leonora and Polly, nor indeed did I ever think of them again, till Polly's letter and mummy case recalled them to my memory.

Perhaps for pretty Leonora's sake I did, after all, take up and open the vast cylindrical roll of MS.[4 - Don't you think it would stand being cut a little? – Publisher.We shall see. – Ed.] in the mummy case. Dawn found me still reading the following record of unparalleled adventure.[5 - There is just one thing that puzzles me. Polly and Leonora have gone, no man knows where, and, taking everything into consideration, it may be a good two thousand years before they come back.Ought I not, then, to invest, in my own name, the princely cheque of the Intelligent Publishers? – Ed.]

CHAPTER II.

POLLY'S NARRATIVE

I am the plainest woman in England, bar none.[6 - I may as well say at once that I will not be responsible for Polly's style. Sometimes it is flat, they tell me, and sometimes it is flamboyant, whatever they may mean. It is never the least like what one would expect an elderly lady don (or Donna), to write. – Ed.]Even in youth I was not, strictly speaking, voluptuously lovely. Short, stumpy, with a fringe like the thatch of a newly evicted cottage, such was my appearance at twenty, and such it remains. Like Cain, I was branded.[7 - See The Mark of Cain [Arrowsmith], an excellent shillingsworth. – Ed.Is this not 'log rolling'? – Publisher.] But enough of personalities. I had in youth but one friend, a lady of kingly descent (the kings, to be sure, were Irish), and of bewitching loveliness. When she rushed into my lonely rooms, one wild winter night, with a cradle in her arms and a baby in the cradle; when she besought me to teach that infant Hittite, Hebrew, and the Differential Calculus, and to bring it up in college, on commons (where the air is salubrious), what could I do but acquiesce? It is unusual, I know, for a student of my sex, however learned, to educate an infant in college and bring her up on commons. But for once the uncompromising nature of my charms strangled the breath of scandal in the bud, and little Leonora O'Dolite became the darling of the university. The old Keeper of the Bodleian was a crusty bachelor, who liked nothing young but calf, and preferred morocco to that. But even he loved Leonora. One night the little girl was lost, and only after looking for her in the Hebdomadal Boardroom, in the Sheldonian, the Pusaeum, and all the barges, did we find that unprincipled old man amusing her by letting off crackers and Roman-candles among the Mexican MSS. in the Bodleian!

These were halcyon hours, happier as Leonora grew up and received the education prescribed for her by her parent. Her Hebrew was fair, and her Hittite up to a first class, but, to my distress, she mainly devoted herself to Celtic studies.

I should tell you that Leonora's chief interest in life was the decipherment of the inscriptions on her cradle – the mummy case which had rocked her ancestors since Abraham's time, and which is now in your possession. Of itself it is a sufficient proof of the accuracy of this narrative. The mummy case is not the ordinary coffin of Egyptian commerce. The hieroglyphics have baffled Dr. Isaac Taylor, and have been variously construed as Chinese, Etruscan, and Basque, by the various professors of these learned lingoes.[8 - Don't you think this bit is a little dull? The public don't care about dead languages. – Publisher.Story can't possibly get on without it, as you'll see. You must have something of this sort in a romance. Look at Poe's cypher in the Gold Beetle, and the chart in Treasure Island, and the Portuguee's scroll in King Solomon's Mines. – Ed.]

Now about this mummy case: you must know that it had been in Leonora's family ever since her ancestress, Theodolitê, Pharaoh's daughter, left Egypt, not knowing when she was well off, and settled in Ireland, of all places, where she founded the national prosperity.[9 - Is not this a little steep? – Publisher.No; it is in all the Irish histories. See Lady Wilde's Ancient Legends of Ireland, if you don't believe me. – Ed.]

The mummy case and a queer ring (see cover) inscribed with a duck, a duck's egg, and an umbrella, were about all that the O'Dolites kept of their ancient property. The older Leonora grew the more deeply she studied the inscriptions on the mummy case. She tried it as Zend, she tried it as Sanskrit, and Japanese, and the American language, and finally she tried it as Irish.

We had a very rainy season that winter even for Oxford, and the more it rained the more Leonora pored over that mummy case. I kept telling her there was nothing in it, but she would not listen to me.

CHAPTER III.

LEONORA'S DISCOVERY

One wild winter night, when the sleet lashed the pane, my door suddenly opened. I started out of a slumber, and – could I believe my eyes? can history repeat itself? – there stood the friend of my early youth, her eyes ablaze, a cradle in her arms. Was it all coming round again? A moment's reflection showed me that it was not my early friend, but her daughter, Leonora.

'Leonora,' I screamed, 'don't tell me that you– '

'I have deciphered the inscription,' said the girl proudly, setting down the cradle. The baby had not come round.

'Oh, is that all?' I replied. 'Let's have a squint at it' (in my case no mere figure of speech).

'What do you call that?' said Leonora, handing me the accompanying document.

'I call it pie,' said I, using a technical term of typography. 'I can't make head or tail of it,' I said peevishly.

'Well, pie or no pie, I love it like pie, and I've broken the crust,' answered the girl, 'according to my interpretation, which I cannot mistrust.'

'Why?' I asked.

'Because,' she answered; and the response seemed sufficient when mixed with her bright smile.

'It runs thus,' she resumed with severity, 'in the only language you can partially understand —

'It runs thus,' she reiterated, and I could not help saying under such breath as I had left, 'Been running a long time now.'

She frowned and read —

'I, Theodolitê, daughter of a race that has never been run out, did to the magician Jambres, whose skill was even as the skill of the gods, those things which as you have not yet heard I shall now proceed to relate to you.

'Of him, I say, was I jealous, for that he loved a maiden inferior – Oh how inferior! – to me in charms, wit, beauty, intellect, stature, girth, and ancestry. Therefore, being well assured of this, I made the man into a mummy, ere ever his living spirit had left him. What arts I used to this last purpose it boots not, nor do I choose to tell. When I had done this thing I put him secretly away in a fitting box, even as Set concealed Osiris. Then came my maidens and tidied him away, as is the wont of these accursed ones. From that hour, even until now, has no man nor woman known where to find him, even Jambres the magician. For though the mummifying, as thou shalt not fail to discover, was in some sort incomplete, yet the tidying away and the losing were so complete that no putting forth of precious papyri into cupboards beneath flights of stairs has ever equalled it.

'Now, therefore, shall I curse these maidens, even in Amenti, the place of their tormenting.

'Forget them, may they be eternally forgotten.

'Curse them up and down through the whole solar system.'

'This is very violent language, my dear,' said I.

'Our people swore terribly in Egypt,' answered Leonora, calmly.

'But it is vain, no woman can curse worth a daric.[10 - From the use of the word daric I conjecture that Leonora's ancestress lived under the Persian Empire. There or thereabout. – M. M.]

'But for this, the losing of the one whom I mummied, must I suffer countless penalties. For I, even the seeress, know not what the said maidens did with the said mummy, nor do you know, nor any other. And not to know, for I want my mummy to have a good cry over, is great part of my punishment. But this I, the seeress, do know right well, for it was revealed to me in a dream. And this I do prophesy unto thee, my daughter, or daughter's daughter, ay, this do I say, that a curse will rest upon me until He who was mummied shall be found.

'Now this also do I, the seeress, tell thee. He who was mummified shall be found in the dark country, where there is no sun, and men breathe the vapour of smoke, and light lamps at noonday, and wire themselves even with wires when the wind bloweth. And the place where the mummy dwelleth is beneath the Three Balls of Gold. And one will lead thee thither who abides hard by the great tree carven like the head of an Ethiopian. And thou shalt come to the people who slate strangers, and to the place of the Rolling of Logs, and the music thereof.

'Thereafter shalt thou find Him, even Jambres. And when thou hast healed him the Curse shall fall from me!

'Nor, indeed, shall the unmummying be accomplished, even then, unless thou, O my daughter, or my daughter's daughter as before, shalt go with He-who-was-mummied to the Hall of Egyptian Darkness and sit in the Wizard's Chair that is thereby, even the seat which was erst the Siege Perilous. These things have I said, well knowing that they shall be accomplished.

'To thee, my daughter!

    'Thy Grandmother.'

'There, Polly, what do you say to that?' said Nora.

'Your grandmother!' I replied.

'Polly!' said Miss Nora, looking at me with quite needlessly flashing eyes, 'you and I will set out on the search for this unhappy mummied one.'

'Don't you think the critics will call the motive rather thin?' I demurred.

'Thin, to rescue my ancestress from a curse!' said Leonora.

'There's just one other thing,' she mused. 'Shall we take a low comedy character this time, or not?'

'Let's take Ustâni,' I proposed, 'he can double the part with that of the Faithful Black! A great saving in hotel bills and railway fares.'

CHAPTER IV.