Part 2

“_Pharaoh_ comes into the Bible,” began Rachel, looking puzzled. “But I thought you said it was another man, King Cheops, who had this Pyramid built.”

“_Pharaoh_ was the name given to _all_ the kings of Egypt, but this is not the Pharaoh who dreamt of the fat and lean kine, nor the Pharaoh Moses knew, who was stricken with plagues. _This_ Pharaoh, whose other name was King _Cheops_, lived long before the days of Joseph and Moses.”

Rachel gave a funny little murmur of excitement.

“We _have_ gone back far into the Past, haven’t we? It’s—it’s rather frightening. I feel as though I should never get home again!” She looked really anxious, and Sheshà laid his brown hand gently upon her head.

“Have no fear. In less time than I take to say it, you will be seated in an omnibus, travelling back to your aunt’s home,” he declared with a curious smile.

“Oh, but I don’t want to go yet!” Rachel hastily assured him. “I want to see everything. It’s so _frightfully_ interesting,” she went on, incoherently.

“Again have no fear. You shall see and hear, for Time itself is a ‘magic’ thing, little maiden, and wonders can be worked during the opening and shutting of the eyes. Let us now follow that procession to the royal tomb.”

The painted chariot drawn by white horses with marvellous trappings, had now been reined up before the entrance to a passage on one side of the Pyramid. On either hand the workmen and the other people who had been passing to and fro now lay prostrate in the dust, while the great king was led from the chariot by the men Rachel had already seen dressed in robes like that worn by Sheshà.

“Those are the priests of the order to which I belong,” he said. “They are the people nearest to Pharaoh, the learned men whom he honours—poets, historians, physicians, as well as priests. With them he talks and takes counsel. These others,” he pointed to the poor men on the ground, “are his slaves who bow down before him, and are used as beasts of burden.”

Rachel looked at them pityingly as with Sheshà she followed the wise men and the reigning Pharaoh, King Cheops, into the passage hewn within the Pyramid. No one noticed her presence, and somehow, though she was almost close enough to touch the robes in front of her, Rachel was not surprised. Plainly, as through the quivering haze surrounding them she could see the wonderful group of people, she knew they were not exactly _real_. She could not have touched them. She saw their lips move, but she heard no sound.

In a few minutes the passage, which sloped upwards, broadened out into a little hall lined with polished granite. Here the priests who were following the mighty Pharaoh, very slowly and solemnly ranged themselves against the walls, leaving the middle of the floor clear. Rachel then saw the king standing alone, and looking down upon something that looked like a coffin made of red granite placed in the centre of the hall. The priests bowed their heads, and she saw their lips moving, while the king stood motionless as a statue, his white robes and his strange head-dress appearing as though they were carved upon a painted figure.

For a second Rachel saw this, and then almost before she could breathe, she was standing under the blue sky, looking at the scarcely finished outside of the Pyramid, from which all the builders had disappeared, as had also the crowds upon the road bordering the river Nile.

She rubbed her eyes. “It’s so strange,” she began, dreamily. “Was all that great Pyramid built only to hold a little grave? Because I suppose that was what the stone thing that the king looked down on, really was?”

“It was the outside _case_ of a coffin—yes,” said Sheshà. “Such a case is called a _sarcophagus_. The real coffin was made of wood, placed within the sarcophagus, upon which a granite lid was fixed and sealed down when a man was dead.”

“Why did this Pharaoh want such a great place only for a tomb?” asked Rachel, still puzzled. “Fancy making thousands and thousands of people work, just to build a great heap over a grave! Why did he do it?”

“Partly because he wanted to be remembered for ever (and though he was forgotten for ages, we are now talking about him after six thousand years!) But also because of what was taught by the ancient religion of the Egyptians.”

“What was that?” asked Rachel.

Sheshà smiled, his grave, strange smile. “It taught many things difficult to explain to a little maid of to-day. But one thing was this. When a man died, his soul left his body, and wandered about, entering into other bodies—possibly for hundreds of years. But it might happen that, after many ages, the soul should want to return to its old home—its old body. Therefore, that body was carefully preserved, in case the soul should wish to re-enter it.”

“But if it was very long before it wanted to come back it would find its home turned to dust, wouldn’t it?”

“For that we provided,” answered Sheshà, “by preserving the poor body in a way that is called _embalming_. We filled it with sweet spices, and wrapped it closely in linen bandages, and——”

“I know! The dead people like that are called _mummies_, aren’t they? I was just going to ask Miss Moore to take me to see them when I met you!” Rachel interrupted.

“There are many such embalmed bodies in your great museum. When you see them, little maid, remember that you are looking upon the very features of men and women who lived under this blue sky, and enjoyed this sunshine, thousands of years before their bodies were taken to your grey city beside the Thames. They were people who worshipped indeed, but gods very different from the God worshipped in your churches and cathedrals of to-day.”

“You worshipped the river, didn’t you?” asked Rachel, presently, as Sheshà was silent.

“Osiris, God of the River and the Sun,” murmured Sheshà, as though to himself. “Him we worshipped, and Isis, the fruitful Earth, and—” He paused suddenly, and looked down at Rachel. “Our worship is difficult for you to understand. Would it please you instead, to behold this place as it looks _now_—to the travellers of To-day. As your father, for instance, beheld it only this morning?”

“Oh _yes_,” cried Rachel eagerly. “That’s just what I _should_ like.”

“Prepare then to see _nine_, instead of one of these mighty works—eight of them built after this first Pyramid of King Cheops, but, even so, thousands of years old, and battered not so much by the hand of Time as by the hands of destructive men. Turn towards the river, child of To-day, and, with closed eyes, bow seven times.”

Rachel again obeyed, and, when she turned and looked, instead of one, a group of Pyramids stood up grandly against such a sunset sky as she had never before imagined. The sand of the desert, the flowing river, the worn sides of the huge buildings, were washed by a rosy glow. And battered and worn, as they now looked, they were still the Pyramids as they had stood for thousands and thousands of years before she was born.

Changed though it was, Rachel recognised at once the great tomb of King Cheops, and as she looked she listened to Sheshà speaking, though somehow the voice sounded faint and far away.

“_All things dread Time, but Time itself dreads the Pyramids_,” she heard him say. And then, after a moment, “Gaze well, O child, upon one of the Seven Wonders of the World.”

The last words came so faintly that Rachel turned to look at her friend—and instead found Miss Moore at her elbow.

She was still consulting her watch, and Rachel was still standing in front of the black Rosetta Stone.

“I think we ought to go,” said Miss Moore. “It will take us some time to get back, and we mustn’t be late for lunch.”

Rachel drew a long breath, and followed her governess in silence.

When you have just stepped out of Egypt into the British Museum, you feel you don’t want to talk—and Rachel scarcely spoke all the way home.

On the hall table, waiting for her, lay a letter from her father, and his little daughter eagerly pounced upon it, and ran with it to her bedroom. Mother was much better already, the letter said, and, after a great deal of other news, Rachel came upon a sentence which interested her more than her father could have imagined, when he wrote it.

“I have just seen the Pyramids! One of these days you and I will go to Egypt and look at them again together. But you must learn something about them first, or you won’t be half so excited about them as I am.”

Rachel laughed gleefully. “Dad hasn’t seen King Cheops, anyhow,” she thought. “And he’d be certain to think I dreamt it if I told him all about Sheshà and the slaves. No one would believe me—so I shan’t say anything about this lovely adventure.”

She ran down to lunch, happy and excited by her secret.

“Well, how did you enjoy the British Museum?” enquired Aunt Hester, when she had heard all the news contained in the letter from Egypt.

“Oh, I _loved_ it!” exclaimed Rachel, and two little dimples appeared at the corners of her mouth as she tried to repress a smile. “When can I go again?”

Miss Moore looked a little surprised, for she remembered no particular enthusiasm on Rachel’s part during the morning.

“A most instructive place,” she observed, turning to Aunt Hester. “I’m sure Rachel will learn a great deal there.”

And again Rachel tried to keep back a smile.

SECOND WONDER

All the rest of that day Rachel went about feeling excited and happy. It was not till next morning when she woke that doubt crept into her mind. Could she _really_ have been to Egypt and seen the great Pyramid of Cheops before it was quite finished? Surely, she couldn’t _really_ have talked to Sheshà, the priest of that ancient king! It must, of course, have been a dream. Yet how had she managed to go to sleep in the British Museum? And how was it, if she had dreamt the whole adventure, that she remembered everything distinctly, and not in the confused fashion of an ordinary dream? Rachel was puzzled, but she was obliged to come to the sad conclusion that somehow or other the glowing pictures in her mind, of slaves, of Pharaoh in his chariot, of the room within the Pyramid holding the sarcophagus, were, as her old nurse used to say, “all imagination.”

It was a terribly disappointing thought, and for the whole of the following day she felt quite dull and miserable, especially as Aunt Hester wouldn’t hear of another immediate visit to the British Museum.

“It’s too far,” she declared. “You may go next week. But I can’t think why you’re so anxious about it. Miss Moore says you didn’t seem particularly interested while you were there.”

Rachel couldn’t of course tell Aunt Hester that in her longing for the British Museum, there was a faint hope that if by any chance the adventure had been “real”—there, if anywhere, “something might happen.”

A few mornings afterwards, however, something _did_ happen. At breakfast time Aunt Hester put down a letter she had been reading, and looked across at her niece.

“Old Mr. Sheston is coming to lunch,” she remarked. “He says he thinks he must have seen you the other day. He knew you from your likeness to your father.”

“Who is old Mr. Sheston?” asked Rachel, looking up from putting more sugar on her porridge.

Aunt Hester smiled. “He’s a funny old man who has been a friend of our family for years, and knew your father as a boy. He is doing some important work at the British Museum, so you’ll be able to talk to him about it.”

Rachel pricked up her ears.

“Why is he funny?” she enquired.

Again Aunt Hester smiled. “He dresses in a strange way for one thing, and he has all sorts of curious ideas that you wouldn’t understand. He’s a dear old man—but eccentric. Certainly eccentric,” she added as though to herself.

“_Eccentric_ means not like other people, doesn’t it?” murmured Rachel. “I’ve never heard Dad talk about him.”

“I don’t think he’s seen him since he was a boy.... Certainly you _are_ very like your father as he was at your age, child! I’m not surprised that the old man recognized you.”

Rachel was running across the hall just before lunch, when in answer to a knock at the front door, the parlourmaid admitted a strange figure, wrapped in a long cloak, one end of which was thrown over the left shoulder. A battered hat almost hid the face of the little old gentleman who entered—but in a flash Rachel remembered him. He was looking at the Rosetta Stone the day she and Miss Moore went to the British Museum! And he had spoken to her—or had she dreamt this? It was curious, but she really couldn’t remember. All she knew at the moment was, that he and the Rosetta Stone were, as she put it, “mixed up together in her mind.”

By this time the visitor had taken off his hat, and Rachel, so puzzled and curious that she had stopped short in the middle of the hall, saw a pair of dark eyes in a crinkled, wrinkled face under a fringe of white hair.

The old man smiled and held out both hands.

“You are Rachel,” he said. “I knew when I saw you last week in the Egyptian gallery, that you must be your father’s daughter.”

Rachel felt suddenly shy, and was glad when Aunt Hester came down the stairs and, after a word or two of greeting, led the way straight into the dining-room.

At table, during the meal, Rachel sat opposite to the guest, who now and then looked across at her, and every time she met his dark eyes she was puzzled afresh.

“You’ll be glad to hear that Rachel is _most_ interested in the British Museum,” said Aunt Hester, presently.

“I _am_ glad to hear it,” was all the old man said, but he smiled in such a way as to make Rachel more excited and puzzled than ever.

She listened eagerly to what he was saying to Aunt Hester. He was talking about what he called the “explorations” in Egypt, and she gathered from his conversation that men were often sent out by the people who took charge of the British Museum, to dig and explore among the ruins in Egypt and other ancient countries, and to bring back some of the things they found to London.

He made the story of these explorers and what they discovered, so exciting, that Aunt Hester, who did not at first seem very curious, began to ask questions. Rachel wanted to ask a great many more, for her head was still full of her strange dream—as she now called it—about Egypt, and it was interesting to know how all the tombs and monuments and statues she had seen last week had found their way to England.

“You can run away now, Rachel,” said Aunt Hester, when lunch was over, and Grayson was bringing in coffee.

“Don’t let her run very far,” observed Mr. Sheston. “Because I’m going to take her back with me to the Museum in ten minutes.”

He said this without looking at her, and Rachel gasped for joy, and glanced imploringly at Aunt Hester, who laughed.

“You always _announce_ what you are going to do, I remember,” she declared, speaking to her guest. “You never _ask_.”

“A habit of mine,” returned the old gentleman quietly. “Acquired long ago.”

“Go and get ready,” said Aunt Hester, with a nod to her niece, and Rachel flew like the wind.

Ten minutes later she was seated in a taxi-cab with Mr. Sheston, who talked about her father, about her country home, her brothers and sisters, and everything in the world except just the things Rachel wanted him to talk about—Egypt and the Pyramids.

At last, however, he said quite suddenly, just as they were going up the steps of the Museum, “How long is it since you were here?”

“Five or six days, I think, or perhaps—”

“_Seven_ days,” corrected the old gentleman, quietly, and all at once Rachel began to get excited.

They entered the building, and she noticed that all the officials in uniform touched their hats to the little old man who was evidently very well known there. He turned at once to the Egyptian Gallery, and as they passed the Rosetta Stone, Rachel looked back.

“I know all about _that_,” she said, glancing up at Mr. Sheston, who only smiled.

“We will go to the Babylonian Room in a minute,” he said. “Do you know where to find Babylonia on the map?”

Only that morning, in looking as she always did now, for Egypt, Rachel had seen it marked in her atlas.

“It’s up above Arabia, isn’t it?” she began, uncertainly “Up above the Persian Gulf.”

“And do you remember any of its cities that were famous once?”

“Babylon?” suggested Rachel.

Mr. Sheston nodded.

“Babylon,” he repeated, and after a moment added, as though to himself, “_How far is it to Babylon?_”

“Why, that’s in a book of poetry I’ve got,” exclaimed Rachel. “It’s called ‘A Child’s Garden of Verses.’”

“Yes, there are a great many things in Stevenson’s Child’s Garden,” said the old man. “We’ll find out how far it is to Babylon presently. But, before we do that, just come into this room for a moment.”

He took her hand and led her into a narrow passage to the right of the big Egyptian hall through which they had come.

“Is there anything here that reminds you of—something else?” he asked.

Rachel glanced about, and suddenly her eyes rested on a monument against a wall, carved curiously in stone. Beneath it there was an inscription, and she went nearer and began to read the words aloud.

“_The tomb of Sheshà, High Priest of Cheops_,” she began, and suddenly stopped short.

“Why...!” she exclaimed, turning to Mr. Sheston, and then again stopped short, for in his place stood her friend Sheshà in his beautiful robe, his young face framed by the strange head-dress she so well remembered! And yet—somehow—it was Mr. Sheston too! Sheshà and the old man were in a curious way one and the same person!

“Why, you _are_ Sheshà!” cried Rachel, incoherently. “But then—why?”—she glanced at the tomb—“That means you were _dead_—ages and ages ago?” she whispered. “How can you be here—?”

The young priest smiled. “Tombs are but folly,” he answered. “Do you remember, little maid, what I said to you of the soul, and how it lives and returns after many thousand years to inhabit the same, or perhaps another body?”

Rachel nodded, too overwhelmed to speak.

“Well, then, are not tombs folly?” he repeated, still smiling. “But come, of Egypt you have had a glimpse already. Now shall you behold Babylon.”

He turned and led the way towards another gallery running parallel with the Egyptian one, and, as Rachel followed him, she wondered for a moment why the people strolling about in the Museum did not stare in amazement at the wonderful figure of Sheshà in his priestly robe. No one took the slightest notice, however, and she remembered that Miss Moore had on a previous occasion seen and heard nothing.

“They’re not mixed up with _seven_, I suppose,” she reflected, before Sheshà began to speak again. He talked, she thought, rather as though he were translating from another language, trying to make what he said quite modern. “But sometimes,” thought Rachel, “he forgets—and then he says ‘_behold_,’ and ‘_verily_,’ and old-fashioned words like that!”

“Let us first look at some of the wonders which, long buried, have come at last to this Museum,” he suggested, pausing in front of a huge statue. It represented a creature with the body of a bull, and the face of a man with a long curled beard cut square—while from the shoulders of the beast sprang two great wings.

“Here is one out of many such marvels,” he added.

Rachel looked at the monster, full of curiosity.

“Was _this_ dug up by the people you were talking about to Aunt Hester to-day? I mean—at lunch time—when you were—Mr. Sheston?”

Sheshà smiled. “I was the same person then as now. It was only my body that was different.... Yes, little maid, this was found by the explorers not far from Babylon. Now glance with me at these pictures in stone.” He turned into a narrow gallery close at hand, and pointed to the walls against which were fastened large slabs of stone sculptured most beautifully with scenes of hunting, with processions in which kings rode in chariots under graceful canopies like parasols hung with fringe, or stood looking down upon long lines of prisoners chained together.

“These came from the palace of one Tiglath Pileser, a king who lived more than seven hundred years before Christ was born. He was one of the conquerors of Babylon.”

“But I do want to see Babylon itself!” exclaimed Rachel. “You did mean I should _really_ see it, didn’t you?”

“Patience!” murmured Sheshà. “Patience! You are just about to see Babylon first as it is now—and then as it was in the days of its splendour. Shut your eyes. Beat seven times with your foot on this stone floor—and have no fear of what befalls. You are safe with me.”

Trembling with excitement, Rachel did as she was told, and at the last tap of her foot, was conscious of a most strange and wonderful sensation. She seemed to be out of doors, and not only out of doors, but rushing through the air, while a noise like that of a great engine almost deafened her.

“We are near Babylon!” said a voice close to her ear, and, as she opened her eyes, Rachel gasped, for she was seated in an aeroplane, and the pilot of the machine, in the dress of an airman, was—Sheshà! Rachel had so often longed to fly, that at first she could think of nothing but the wonder and excitement of her first rush through the air, and it was only by degrees that she began to notice the earth below. The machine was dropping nearer to it now, and she saw they were flying over a vast plain through which flowed a river. Three large mounds near this river broke the monotony of the desert place, overarched by the beautiful blue sky, and when the aeroplane skimmed yet lower, Rachel saw little figures moving near the mounds, like ants running over an ant heap.

At the same moment the noise of the aeroplane’s engine ceased, and she was able to talk to the pilot.

“Why those are _men_, aren’t they?” she said, pointing to the tiny figures. “And what are those heaps of rubbish there?”

“All that is left of Babylon—the beautiful and proud City of Babylon,” answered the voice of the pilot, Sheshà.

Rachel looked at the desert plain with its three “rubbish heaps,” as she called them, in silent astonishment.

“Is _that_ where the bulls with wings and the other things in the British Museum come from?” she added at length.

“Some of them—yes.”

“And are those little men down there digging up other things now?”

“Yes. They are working for the Museum. By-and-by, in a few weeks, perhaps, you may read a column in your newspaper at breakfast time giving an account of the latest things found in that heap,” he pointed to the largest of them. “That mound below you is called _Babil_, and it covers the palace in which dwelt King Nebuchadnezzar, nearly three thousand years ago.”

“The Nebuchadnezzar in the Bible that I was reading about with Miss Moore only this morning?”

“Yes—the Nebuchadnezzar who conquered the city of Jerusalem and brought the Children of Israel captives to Babylon—the Nebuchadnezzar who set up the golden image to which Daniel would not bow down.”

“And the fiery furnace!” interrupted Rachel, eagerly, “that didn’t burn the three Children of Israel when Nebuchadnezzar threw them into it.... I remember!... And there’s a psalm about them when they were prisoners in Babylon.”

“_By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion_,” quoted Sheshà, in a dreamy voice. “There is one of the rivers of Babylon.” He pointed to the great stream—the Euphrates—on both sides of which the city was built.

“It doesn’t look as though there could ever have been a city here,” Rachel declared, gazing down upon the desert and the mounds of earth. “How could it have disappeared altogether like that?”