have but little use for them, since she was his nearest and dearest on earth.

He pulled his stockings over the pants of his pyjamas and put on his velvet working jacket, forgetting for the moment that, if these things were true, it would be perfectly easy for him to make himself invisible to beings in the ordinary world of three dimensions. Then he turned out the light, opened the door very softly, and crept downstairs.

Yes, what he had seen was true. He heard the soft, shuffling patter of stockinged feet along the landing, though he could see nothing in the dark. A door opened gently. His sense of location told him that it was the door of the spare bedroom next but one to the study. He felt his way silently and softly along the wall, and as he did so his hand touched the electric switch. Should he turn the light on and alarm the house? Whoever was there had "broken and entered" after midnight, and was therefore outside the law. No, he would not do that. If what he had seen was true, the intruders believed that their mission was a sacred one. No doubt the man was armed, and perhaps the woman also, and what would a knife-stab mean to them on such a desperate quest?

As these thoughts ran at lightning speed through his mind, he saw a faint glow inside the room. He crept forward and looked round the side of the doorway. The man had a little electric lamp in his hand and was flashing the slender rays all over the room. He drew his head back quickly as he heard him say:

"There is nothing here, Anat. Come, let us try the next room. Neither lock nor bolt nor even human life must stand in the way of our search now that we have begun it!"

He heard them coming towards the door. Instinctively he shrank back, and his heart stood still as he thought of what would happen if the man chanced to turn the little ray of his lamp on him. Almost involuntarily his thoughts went back to the promise of Queen Nitocris, and something like a prayer that it might be kept rose to his lips.

They came out, and the man flashed the thin electric ray up and down the passage. It wavered hither and thither, and at last fell directly on his face. He was anything but a coward, but he was thinking of Niti—and what if a knife-stab left her undefended? But to his amazement, although they were both looking straight at him, the expression of neither face changed in the slightest. They had not seen him. The Queen had answered his prayer. He was no longer in the world of three dimensions, and so he was invisible to all dwellers in it. For him, then, there was evidently no danger—but Niti——?

They moved along to the next door. That was hers. The woman put her hand on the knob and turned it. To his horror, the door opened. She had forgotten to lock it. They both crept in, and he followed them boldly enough now, knowing what he did. The ray leapt rapidly about the room till it fell on the bed with its pale blue silken coverlet, and then on the pillow, on which rested the head of the sleeping, breathing image of the long-dead Queen.

With a half-stifled gasp the man shrank back and dropped the lamp, and the Professor heard him say to the woman in a shuddering whisper:

"By the High Gods, Neb-Anat, it is a miracle! Do you not see her? It is she—the Queen—alive again, as the ancient prophecy said she should be. What magic have these heathens used?"

"Yes," replied the woman, whispering lower, "truly it is the Queen, and she is alive and sleeping—no doubt passing from the sleep of death through the sleep of life to life again. Now, O Pent-Ah, is our task much harder, yet will its accomplishment be all the more glorious for you and me, and greatly will our Lord reward us if we can restore to his keeping, not the ravished mummy of Nitocris, but the Queen herself, warm and breathing and beautiful, as she was in the ancient days of the great Rameses."

"I'll be hanged if you do!" said the Professor to himself, "not, at least, if Her Majesty's legacy to me is worth anything. Abduct my daughter at the dead of night, would you, you scoundrels? We'll see about that. If you don't leave this house as thoroughly frightened as ever you were in your lives, I know nothing about the fourth dimension."

Meanwhile he heard them both groping about the floor after the lamp. The woman found it, and pressed the button. The ray fell on the man's face, and he saw that the olive of his skin had turned to a ghastly grey. His eyes were wide open, and his mouth and nostrils were working with intense excitement. Then the woman turned the ray on Niti's face again.

"They will wake her if this goes on much longer," said the Professor to himself again. "I had better stop this little comedy before it becomes a tragedy. Poor Niti would go half mad if she found these two scoundrels by her bedside—and yet if I do anything out of the way they will yell. Ah, I think I have it!"

He walked softly out of the room, and when he got into the passage he whispered in the tongue that had become so strangely familiar to him:

"Pent-Ah, Neb-Anat, come hither instantly! Who are you that you should disturb the slumbers of your Lady the Queen!"

He saw them stare at each other with eyes wide with fear and wonder.

"It is the command of the Mighty One," whispered the woman, taking hold of the man's hand and drawing him towards the door.

"And He must be obeyed," said he in reply, bowing his head and following her.

They closed the door very softly behind them.

The Professor could not repress a sigh of thankfulness for Niti's escape from what, at best, would have been a very terrible fright.

"And now, my friends," he went on to himself, "I think I can teach you not to come into an English gentleman's house again with an idea of stealing his property, to say nothing of abducting his daughter."

The man and woman were still staring at each other by the light of the lamp, each holding each other's trembling hand, when the lamp was suddenly snatched away from the woman and went out. Then, to their horror, the ray shot out again in front of them as though the lamp were floating by itself in the air. It flashed from face to face, both ghastly with fear. Then an invisible hand gripped the man's, and drew him with irresistible force along the passage. The woman grasped his coat, and followed with shuffling feet and shaking limbs, dumb with wonder and fear. The hand led them down the passage, round the corner, and into the study. Then it released them. They heard the door shut and the key turn in the lock. Then there was a click, and the electric cluster above the writing-table shone out, apparently of its own volition. The woman uttered a low scream, and cowered down in a corner of a big sofa that stood by the bay-window. The man, after one terrified glance round the room, began to creep towards the open sash; but the invisible hand gripped him by the collar and pulled him back. His trembling knees gave way under him, and he rolled in a heap on the floor.