The Ancient Allan | Page 6

George upon the back
and throw him forward. He reeled and fell into the open grave which in
another moment was filled and covered with the débris that seemed to
grip me to my middle in its flow. After this I remembered nothing more
until hours later I found myself lying in our house.
"Achmet and his Egyptians had done nothing; indeed none of them
could be persuaded to approach the place till the sun rose because, as
they said, the old gods of the land whom they looked upon as devils,
were angry at being disturbed and would kill them as they had killed
the Bey, meaning George. Then, distracted as I was, I went myself for
there was no other European there, to find that the whole site of the
sanctuary was buried beneath hundreds of tons of sand, that, beginning
at the gap in the broken wall, had flowed from every side. Indeed it
would have taken weeks to dig it out, since to sink a shaft was
impracticable and so dangerous that the local officials refused to allow
it to be attempted. The end of it was that an English bishop came up
from Cairo and consecrated the ground by special arrangement with the
Government, which of course makes it impossible that this part of the
temple should be further disturbed. After this he read the Burial Service
over my dear husband.
"So there is the end of a very terrible story which I have written down
because I do not wish to have to talk about it more than is necessary
when we meet. For, dear Mr. Quatermain, we shall meet, as I always
knew that we should--yes, even after I heard that you were dead. You
will remember that I told you so years ago in Kendah Land and that it
would happen after a great change in my life, though what that change
might be I could not say. . . ."
This is the end of the letter except for certain suggested dates for the

visit which she took for granted I should make to Ragnall.


CHAPTER II
RAGNALL CASTLE
When I had finished reading this amazing document I lit my pipe and
set to work to think it over. The hypothetical inquirer might ask why I
thought it amazing. There was nothing odd in a dilettante Englishman
of highly cultivated mind taking to Egyptology and, being, as it
chanced, one of the richest men in the kingdom, spending a fraction of
his wealth in excavating temples. Nor was it strange that he should
have happened to die by accident when engaged in that pursuit, which I
can imagine to be very fascinating in the delightful winter climate of
Egypt. He was not the first person to be buried by a fall of sand. Why,
only a little while ago the same fate overtook a nursery- governess and
the child in her charge who were trying to dig out a martin's nest in a
pit in this very parish. Their operations brought down a huge mass of
the overhanging bank beneath which the sand-vein had been hollowed
by workmen who deserted the pit when they saw that it had become
unsafe. Next day I and my gardeners helped to recover their bodies, for
their whereabouts was not discovered until the following morning, and
a sad business it was.
Yet, taken in conjunction with the history of this couple, the whole
Ragnall affair was very strange. When but a child Lady Ragnall, then
the Hon. Miss Holmes, had been identified by the priests of a remote
African tribe as the oracle of their peculiar faith, which we afterwards
proved to be derived from old Egypt, in short the worship of Isis and
Horus. Subsequently they tried to steal her away and through the
accident of my intervention, failed. Later on, after her marriage when
shock had deprived her of her mind, these priests renewed the attempt,
this time in Egypt, and succeeded. In the end we rescued her in Central
Africa, where she was playing the part of the Mother-goddess Isis and
even wearing her ancient robes. Next she and her husband came home

with their minds turned towards a branch of study that took them back
to Egypt. Here they devote themselves to unearthing a temple and find
out that among all the gods of Egypt, who seem to have been extremely
numerous, it was dedicated to Isis and Horus, the very divinities with
whom they recently they had been so intimately concerned if in
traditional and degenerate forms.
Moreover that was not the finish of it. They come to the sanctuary.
They discover the statue of the goddess with the child gone, as their
child was gone. A disaster occurs and