"You will not do so! You will be my friend, my defender in the Press. Of what you have seen to-night you will say nothing!"

"Why?"

"No matter! It will be so!"

A silence fell between them that endured until the car pulled up before Sheard's gate.

With ironic courtesy, he invited Séverac Bablon to enter and partake of some refreshment after the night's excitement. With a grace that made the journalist slightly ashamed of his irony, that incomprehensible man accepted.

Leaving him in the same arm-chair which he had occupied when first he set eyes upon him, Sheard went to the dining-room and returned with a siphon, a decanter, and glasses. He found Séverac Bablon glancing through an edition of Brugsch's "Egypt Under the Pharaohs." He replaced the book on the shelf as Sheard entered.

"These Egyptologists," he said, "they amuse me! Dissolve them all in a giant test-tube, and the keenest analysis must fail to detect one single grain of imagination!"

His words aroused Sheard's curiosity, but the lateness of the hour precluded the possibility of any discussion upon the subject.

When, shortly, Séverac Bablon made his departure, he paused at the gate and proffered his hand, which Sheard took without hesitation.

"Good-night—or, rather, good-morning!" he said smilingly. "We shall meet again very soon!"

The other, too tired to wonder what his words might portend, returned to the house, and, lingering only to scrawl a note that he was not to be awakened at the usual time, hastened to bed. As he laid his weary head upon the pillow the cold grey of dawn was stealing in at the windows and brushing out the depths of night's blacker shadows.

It was noon when Sheard awoke—to find his wife gently shaking him.

He sat up with a start.

"What is it, dear?"

"A messenger boy. Will you sign for the letter?"

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