A Living Mummy

We went into the hut after soine hesitation - the dragomán whisperert there were ladies there - and found vigorous old man, telling his Mnssulman beads crosslagged on a mud bench, and on the floor bent over the fire tho oldest looking human being I ever saw alive. "Mummies I haveseen, and wondered not that they were dead, but in what part of her withered desiccated fraintj that old woinan foiind space to keep the stern vital energies that lined her griiu, carved face I can scarcely guess. Sü looked no inore living than seaweed does, dried and stretched on paper. Heiarms, her legs - thrust alinost into the fire - were so shrunk that the long leathern flesh and fiaccid muscles hung round them like dangling shreds on sticks. ' "Round her neck were beads of wood, and round her wrists leathern bracelets - though, to be sure, I cannot feel certain they were not folds of skii - and on her face lurked notonly lines, but gullies and passages, they seemed so deep and fallen. Bnt for the occaeional uptnrned glance of hr cold, unquestioning eye I 'could not have sup posed her anything else than ons of thtv earliest and best preserved of the remotest queens of Egyj)t. "The old man gave us a lusty walcome and sent lor mi Ik and dates and filled our pockets. He showed us Li long spear that hung agaiust the wal and told me wilh a proud gesinvo that he had often killed his man. luit mor often with a sword, and taking me bj the shoulder showed me fiercely how he used to do it. He was 90 years o!: and had never been farther from homethan Assouan. and then only once. "All bis sons sat and stood round us, and in the background against the muil granary white teeth glimmered and the broad, black faces of the women shone. I asked him what present he vvould like, and he asked for a little rice anti alittlecoffee. All the time he clutched and fingered his Muslhn rosary, which, when I admired, he wanted me to accept. The son carne back with us to the dahbcah and carried off the coffe and rice in envelopes, to which I added a handful of cigarettes and a couple of oranges, with particular injunctiou that one was to be give to the old tleinan. -