It Happened in Egypt

								

eager dabbler in the old lore of Egypt, sent me an enthusiastic
telegram the moment he read the documents. They confirmed legends of
the Sudan in which he had been interested. Putting two and two
together--the legends and Ferlini's notes--Anthony was convinced that
we had the clue to fortune. At once he applied for permission to
excavate under the little outlying mountain named by the desert folk
"the Mountain of the Golden Pyramid." At first the spot was thought to
fall within the province given up to Garstang, digging for Liverpool
University. Later, however, the Service des Antiquit�s pronounced the
place to be outside Garstang's borders, and it seemed that luck was
coming our way. No one but we two--Fenton and I--had any inkling of
what might lie hidden in the Mountain of the Golden Pyramid. That was
the great secret! Then Fenton had gone to the Balkans, on a flying trip
in every sense of the word. It was only a fortnight ago--I being then
in Rome--that I had had a wire from him in Salonica saying, "Friends at
work to promote our scheme. Meet me on my return to Egypt." After that,
several telegrams had been exchanged; and here I was on the Laconia
bound for the land of my birth, full of hope and dreams.
For some moments distant Vesuvius had beguiled my thoughts from the
still more distant mountain of the secret, when suddenly a white girl
in a white hood and a long white cloak passed me on the white deck:
whereupon I forgot mountains of reality and dreams. She was one of
those tall, slim, long-limbed, dryad-sort of girls they are running up
nowadays in England and America with much success; and besides all
that, she was an amazing symphony in white and gold against an azure
Italian sea and sky, the two last being breezily jumbled together at
the moment for us on shipboard. She walked well in spite of the blue
turmoil; and if a fair girl with golden-brown hair gets herself up in
satiny white fur from head to foot she is evidently meant to be looked
at. Others were looking: also they were whispering after she went by:
and her serene air of being alone in a world made entirely for her
caused me to wonder if she were not Some One in Particular.
Just then a sweet, soft voice said, close to my ear:
"Why, Duffer, dear, it can't possibly be you!"
I gave a jump, for I hadn't heard that voice for many a year, and
between the ages of four and fourteen I had been in love with it.
"Brigit O'Brien!" said I. Then I grabbed her two hands and shook them
as if her arms had been branches of a young cherry tree, dropping
fruit.
"Why not Biddy?" she asked. "Or are ye wanting me to call ye Lord
Ernest?"
"Good heavens, no! Once a Duffer, always a Duffer," I assured her. "And
I've been thinking of you as Biddy from then till now. Only--"
"'Twas as clever a thing as a boy ever did," she broke in, with one of
her smiles that no man ever forgets, "to begin duffing at an early age,