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bony but small and well shaped hand and was about to give it a hearty
shake, but he remembered in time that it was the custom to kiss the
hands of sovereigns, and he was not sure enough of her rank to take any
chances, so he thought it better to make the mistake on the right side.
So he knelt and kissed the hand held out to him, while his hair stood on
end at that cold and stony contact. He wondered if in some occult way he
had not bound himself to her through eternity. She broke the charm by
saying in a voice as sweet as any one could wish to hear:

"Sir, be good enough to tell me in what way I can serve you, for I see
question in your eyes and desire in your heart?"

This did not reassure him, for he did not half like the idea that all
his thoughts were so evident, but he tried to do the best he could under
the circumstance by saying lamely:

"Most noble of princesses, I will not try to disguise from your highness
that I should be most grateful if you would tell me something about your
illustrious self and how you came to this country and anything you may
have seen in your long pilgrimage. Your highness must have seen many
things that the world would like to know. The master of ceremonies said
that you are more than five thousand years old, yet I find you young and
beautiful-" Here the reporter stopped and strangled, for he happened to
remember that she could read his thoughts, and he had said in his mind,
'Now we shall see how long a woman remains susceptible to flattery," and
the cold sweat broke out on his forehead, but she only smiled more
graciously than before, and said:

"I now perceive that you are not one of those vulgar curiosity seekers
like those who tore me from my tomb, where I had hoped to sleep until my
summons came. There is very little to tell. I have seen but about four
thousand and nine hundred and fifty years, so I am not so old by
considerable as that gentleman said, and doubtless in good faith. But, I
have seen nations, races and armies melt away so that no trace of their
existence remains, no stone of their habitations is seen above ground,
and I have seen lands change their boundaries and the new rise up out of
the old. Kings and queens have become dust and buried so deep in it that
no one can tell where they were. Yes; I have seen so much that it would
require a lifetime to tell you the half."

"Ah, did your highness ever see Cleopatra? She has always been a
prominent figure in Egyptian history-and-she has been much discussed. I
should like to know something of her from a contemporary."

"Oh," she replied stiffly, "I scarcely know to which Cleopatra you
refer. There were several of them, but I suppose you refer to she who
reigned last and was the cause of the overthrow of the nation, and who
killed herself with an asp."

"Yes, your highness, that is the one," replied the young man eagerly.

"Well, in the first place, that queen is entirely too modern, and she
reigned something like three or four hundred years before the Christian
era, while I came from the family of one of the first of the real
Egyptian sovereigns. She was not even Egyptian, being only of Greek
origin. We did not recognize her when she died and she was not even
mummified, for the Romans would not have allowed it, and so no one ever
knew what ever really became of her body. It did not interest us, as she
was an upstart who had brought all sorts of evils upon my country. She
is doubtless dust and ashes two thousand years ago. She was greatly
overrated, and was nowhere near so beautiful as she has been considered.
I belonged to the first dynasty, though there had been many kings and
queens before me. My tomb was like those of the first royal ladies of my
line. I had never been married-nor had I reigned, so according to usage,
my tomb and sarcophagus were plain, save for the paintings on them to
tell who I was. One day some vandals came and rifled my tomb and took my
mummy case, and brought it to this country and put me in the museum in a
glass case, and you have no idea how angry it makes me to have to
squeeze out. May the jackals eat their bones, and leave no two of them
together, so they will never find them in this world or the other and
may wild beasts tear their children, and leave the mothers desolate, and
raze their dwellings, and may their babes starve to death, and may they
all die crying for water-"

How much longer this would have continued the newspaper man did not
know, but he began to feel most uncomfortable, for one of these very
collectors of mummies was his own father, and if he had not brought his
particular one he had brought two others. He began to want to go home,
but he tried to look sympathetic, and as if he had never heard of such
terrible things as stealing mummies before. She continued:

"Yes; I am lady Shep, and when I was mummified these lines were put upon
my case. Not everybody knows about them, but I will tell you. First,
there was a line of text, and this is what it says:

"Royal offering of Osiris Unifer (the good being), great lord god of
Abydos, may he give every good thing, libations to the Ka (Double) of
the Osiris, the lady of the house, the honorable Shep (justified).' This
means that I lay a day and a night in the underground temple in the arms
of Memnon, and all the good deeds I had done were weighed, and when they
were found to be more than the evil ones I was justified. On the other
side was this inscription: "The worthy mistress and daughter of Ru-ru,
Justified; her mother was the lady of the house, Tarerust, Justified,
and worthy.' On the left is another with the goddess Maat, and there are
other gods and goddesses, all saying that Shep, the lady of the house,
is justified and worthy of a place among the illustrious dead. We did
not have to go under the same peculiar conditions as do you who have a
different way of burial and belief. Perhaps because our bodies are made
imperishable we come under another division. I cannot tell, but this I
know, I slept peacefully when I should and did no harm when I came out
at the command, and then the explorers as they call them, came and took
me from my country so far away that I shall never see it more."

"Is there no way by which you could go back?" asked the young man,
touched by her sorrow.

"No: for the scientific men would never let me go. Because my mummy case
is the best one they have, and I am told that men of science have no
honor and no feeling where it concerns the despoiling of tombs, whether
they be of our people, or the red Indians who have built mounds or the
Mexicans, or the old Peruvians. And, besides, we ghosts cannot cross the
ocean in spirit form unless our bones go too."

"May I ask why?" questioned the young man, really distressed by what he
heard, and now understood as he could not have done a day, even a few
hours before.

"Because the spirit is an essence, and the cold of the water chills it,
and renders it powerless to float, and so I can never behold the dear
countr

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